"Today China is undertaking a comprehensive effort to supplant the United States and to undermine us. And they've benefited from the greatest transfer of wealth in history, through the theft and the forced transfer of intellectual property."

WASHINGTON: Identifying China as a major national security challenge for the US, a top CIA official has told lawmakers that the spy agency has an important role in monitoring the Communist giant's rise as a global power.

Gina Haspel, who is currently the acting director of the CIA, would be the first female head of the spy agency if confirmed.

" The CIA has a very important role in monitoring China's rise as a global power," Haspel, US President Donald Trump's nominee for the CIA Director, told members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee yesterday.

"China efforts to diminish US influence, not only in the Pacific, but all around the world. China's unfair trade practices, and China's overt and illicit efforts to steal US technology and know-how and intellectual property," she said.

The CIA is raising its investment on each of these hard targets.

"We have incredible expertise on China at the agency. It is a very strong team. I'm very proud of our analysts. It is a subject that a week doesn't go by that, either, the President asks for an expert briefing or Secretary Mattis asks for someone to brief him on China issues," Haspel said responding to a question from Senator Marco Rubio.

For decades, American foreign policy towards China has been rooted in the belief that as they prospered, economically, they would embrace democracy, they would embrace the global rule of law, Rubio said in his remarks.

"That consensus, by all accounts has been catastrophically wrong," he said

"Today China is undertaking a comprehensive effort to supplant the United States and to undermine us. And they've benefited from the greatest transfer of wealth in history, through the theft and the forced transfer of intellectual property. They use unfair trade and other practices to undermine our industrial and technical base," Rubio said.

"They gather and exploit data at an unrivalled scale. They're building the most capable and well-funded military in world, second to ours," he said, and asked if the CIA was equipped to meet this multi-faceted challenge.

Haspel responded saying China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have very aggressive, offensive cyber programmes, both to steal secrets and in some cases, earn illicit money.

"The CIA can, probably, make the biggest contribution, in collection, about these countries' activities and various groups activities so that we can inform the US government agencies that have to mount our defence," she said.

"Everyone in the US government has been struggling, as all western governments are, on what is the most effective way to organise yourself for cyber defence. We're still working on that, but CIA has a big role," Haspel added.