The CIA (the US’s Central Intelligence Agency) has published a Mandarin-language recruitment video aimed at Chinese soldiers, in an apparent attempt to capitalise on the recent instability in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after a series of high-level purges.

The video, published on the CIA’s YouTube channel on Thursday, is titled The Reason for Stepping Forward: To Save the Future.

It depicts a fictional Chinese military officer who contacts the CIA after becoming disillusioned with his own leaders. The voiceover of the video says: “This is the world I know, defending the homeland and protecting the people. But day after day, the truth becomes increasingly obvious: what leaders are really protecting is their own self-interest.”

Later, the officer says: “I could not let their madness be a part of my daughter’s future.”

The video is the fifth Mandarin-language recruitment advert published by the CIA since October 2024. The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, told Reuters that the videos reached many Chinese citizens, despite the fact that YouTube is blocked in China. Internet users can access blocked websites with the use of specialised software to circumvent China’s internet controls.

Last year, an AI-generated English-language spoof of the recruitment videos appeared on Chinese social media websites, using the same format to mock life in the US, where “Wall Street elites manipulate finance”.

The PLA is in turmoil after Xi Jinping, China’s leader and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, placed his highest-ranking general under investigation for suspected corruption last month. The purging of Zhang Youxia, once seen as Xi’s closest military ally, sent shock waves through western intelligence agencies. Liu Zhenli, another member of the PLA’s ruling body, the Central Military Commission, was also placed under investigation.

Several other officers and senior defence officials have been defenestrated for suspected corruption or disloyalty to Xi in recent years, including the former defence minister Li Shangfu.

On Tuesday, Xi made rare comments acknowledging the turmoil in the PLA, saying the army had “undergone revolutionary tempering in the fight against corruption”. He also said the PLA rank and file had been loyal to the Chinese Communist party and had “proven themselves capable and dependable”.

According to reports, the Chinese government wiped out much of the CIA’s spying network in China between 2010 and 2012, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources. The New York Times reported that one of them was shot in front of his colleagues outside a government building as a warning to others who might have been working for the CIA.

Lin Jian, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said: “China will take all necessary measures to resolutely combat the infiltration and sabotage activities of anti-China forces abroad. We are determined to safeguard our national sovereignty, security and development interests; the schemes of anti-China forces will not succeed.”

Additional research by Lillian Yang