How would you call the spies if not "Chinese"? They are the People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of State Security's spies.
CCP spies? Chinese Communist spies? Personally, I've been trying to correct my use of China/Chinese to "Communist Party" when talking about PRC government topics. I think that's more accurate since the PRC government dominates the Chinese people more than it represents them.
The consequence remains the same with the people I mention that don't care about or are aware of the difference between:
> it just doesn't explicitly differentiate between the people of the country and the government of that country.
> Calling it racism changes the topic of the conversation without starting a substantive conversation about racism or the relationship between citizens and their government.
Ignoring the fact that we have a very, very large amount of shitty people that will start using this to do racist things is just as problematic.