China says it doesn’t use ‘honey traps’ – but warns citizens against seductive foreign spies

As more information emerges regarding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy, many have questioned whether he was the target of an intentional “honey trap,” in which a target is seduced and then blackmailed or surveilled for intelligence.

China has denied any suggestion it spied on Mr. Huang, calling such claims “groundless speculation and slander,” while state media has pushed back on the idea that Beijing would ever countenance such an operation in the first place.

“To my knowledge, the Chinese intelligence never specifically employs the ‘honey trap’ tactic,” Hu Xijin, an influential commentator and former editor of the state-run Global Times, wrote Monday. “While we take precautions against such tactics being used against us, we never require our female intelligence officers to ‘sleep with’ someone to achieve their mission objectives.”

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Mr. Hu is certainly correct on one point: In recent years, China has repeatedly warned citizens about foreign seducers targeting them for intelligence, part of a wider public anti-espionage campaign.

In 2016, the Ministry of State Security, China’s top intelligence agency, plastered Beijing with a comic book-style poster depicting the story of Xiao Li, a young female civil servant seduced by a red-haired foreigner called David, who eventually convinces her to provide him sensitive documents.

“I didn’t know he was a spy,” Xiao Li sobs in the final panel. “He used me!”

MSS often highlights alleged honey trap operations it has shut down, including one last year in which a “beautiful female blogger lured and recruited more than 100 people within China,” according to an official release.

The spy, who went by the pseudonym “Little Coconut,” allegedly had unwitting accomplices help her produce promotional videos about “niche scenic spots,” many of which happened to be situated next to sensitive military installations.

Similarly, in 2024, MSS warned “foreign intelligence agencies are using online dating as a breakthrough point, carefully disguising their identities, creating ‘chance encounters,’ and weaving sweet traps in an attempt to recruit and subvert personnel within our country, steal national secrets, and endanger our national security.”

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How much China uses similar tactics is unclear. According to Communist Party historian Xu Yan, when the Central Special Branch, a counter-intelligence agency, was founded during the Chinese Civil War, future premier Zhou Enlai “stipulated that bribery, seduction, and intimidation with guns were forbidden to obtain intelligence.”

“A key reason for this was that these methods were a double-edged sword; using them against the enemy would also corrupt oneself,” Mr. Xu said in 2011.

Since then however, honey traps have appeared in Chinese TV dramas and films, on both sides of the spying divide, while Western intelligence agencies have warned of China – and many other countries – using such tactics.

During promotion of the Jennifer Lawrence film Red Sparrow, which focused on Russian honey trap operations, former CIA agent Jonna Hiestand Mendez, who acted as an adviser on the film, said she was aware of “spies from China, Taiwan and Czechoslovakia” who had used sex to acquire intelligence.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has long advised Canadian officials travelling overseas to be wary of those who may “seduce you and get you in a compromising position or one where you could be blackmailed.”

“Foreign governments are known to employ this tactic, and employees should be aware of the potential hazards of accepting offers of companionship while travelling,” the service said in a 2012 guide, Far From Home: A Travel Security Guide for Government Officials. “There are also reports of individuals who have suspected they were drugged and who awoke to find that their hotel room had been searched, smartphone stolen and secret business documents missing.”

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Without access to secret files or an assessment by another spy agency, it can often be difficult to say whether someone was honey trapped, but anecdotes of foreign businesspeople or politicians being hit on by suspiciously attractive men or women are common.

In a 2003 divorce deposition, Texas financier Neil Bush – the son and brother of two presidents – admitted to sleeping with several women on business trips to Thailand and Hong Kong after they appeared at his hotel. At the time, Mr. Bush had a US$2-million consulting contract with a Chinese semiconductor manufacturer backed by the son of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.

“Mr. Bush, you have to admit it’s a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her,” his wife’s lawyer, Marshall Davis Brown, asked during the deposition.

“It was very unusual,” Mr. Bush said.