The fools in West will naively chant "the Cold War is over, Russia is now a partner" and "China is capitalist!" until we're staring in the face of another World War.
The Chinese have been building their capabilities silently over many years. Rumsfeld and others took the issue more into their sights towards the end of his tenure, finally. Several years ago they formed several units within the PLA dedicated to cyber warfare; likewise their state sponsors several IO activities that target the audience specifically in the US. People are like sheep, while the masses are shocked and appalled about this attack on the Germans more or less, we have state run Chinese propaganda from Beijing funneled into most American homes via satellite and no one thinks twice about it.
Specifically Germany. It has always been a battlefield and will always remain so. Even today Germany is flooded with Russian collection activities. Near one third of every Russian embassy or consulate is devoted to intelligence activities, and these facilities should be viewed largely as intel outposts in foreign countries. The 911 conspirators based much of their operation out of Hamburg........ China sees Germany as a competitor; they also see Germany as a source of certain technology and conduct industrial espionage on them........ For years China has been sending PLA officers to German universities who study mechanical engineering, chemistry, physics etc.; of course without wearing their uniform. Germany has become a pseudo military academy for their officers who get a high grade education in engineering and the sciences in places like the THD now called TUD ( http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/index.html ).
China is quite frankly a scary topic and most policy makers don’t want to address the issue, if they can avoid it. That’s no different in the US or Germany.
Our enemies also acquire “agents of influence”. Examples include the KGB funding Bill Clinton’s anti-war activities when he was supposed to be attending Oxford and Saudi Arabia paying “consulting” fees to many business and political leaders. I believe that these agents of influence do more damage than outright espionage agents stealing secrets. That’s because agents of influence such as newspaper editors can stifle news and spread propaganda. Lawmakers or bureaucrats can influence policy. I think that there are huge numbers of our citizens who are “owned” by foreign powers. Modern bribery can be quite subtle.