How to Steal an Airplane: US Says China Spies Plundered Industry

China is rapidly closing the gap with the US as the world’s biggest passenger aviation market, but it remains almost entirely dependent on the US and Europe for advanced airplane technologies. China has worked for nearly two decades to change this through homegrown innovation and, according to US authorities, rampant intellectual property theft.

Illustration: Félix Decombat for Bloomberg Businessweek

That secret-stealing mission has fallen to China’s Ministry of State Security, which is believed to be one of the world’s largest intelligence agencies. Some estimates put the size of the MSS at hundreds of thousands of employees—more than the FBI and the CIA combined.

The targets ...