China killed more than 10 CIA informants to immobilize US spy operations, reports say

China has reportedly killed or imprisoned nearly 20 sources cultivated by the United States' premier spy organisation, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to a New York Times report.

The US daily spoke to ten current and former American officials who revealed how China systematically destroyed what had become the CIA's most productive spying operation in China. The report stated that the Chinese counter-intelligence killed at least a dozen CIA sources from the last few weeks of 2010 to the end of 2012.

According to three American officials, one of the sources was shot dead in front of his colleagues at a government building in China, the report stated. The act was possibly meant to send a message to anyone who may be colluding with the CIA to spy in China.

The NYT report also stated that by the year 2010, the CIA had manged to build an expansive network of spies in China, cultivating its sources within the Beijing bureaucracy. The report state that some of the CIA officials were Chinese nationals who had become disenchanted with government corruption in China.

Due to China's intelligence operation, Americans during 2010 were receiving some of the best intelligence they had accumulated in years in China. The intelligence network however began dying by early 2011, and the officials in America soon began to realise that some of their Chinese sources had begun to disappear.

The NYT reports that the CIA and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) began investigating the China operation. Reports state that almost all of the officials at the US embassy in China were probed.

By 2013, the probe concluded that China had been successful in crippling the US's intelligence operation in China.