China is the subject of well over 2,000 FBI investigations

(CNN)Chinese hackers have moved swiftly to target US pharmaceutical and research institutions making progress in the fight against coronavirus, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday in a wide-ranging speech that included some of the agency's starkest accusations about the country's threat to the US to date.

Speaking for nearly an hour at a think tank in Washington, DC, Wray called China the "greatest long-term threat to our nation's information and intellectual property and to our economic vitality" and noted the FBI has more than 2,000 open investigations that tie back to the Chinese government.

He asserted that Chinese President Xi Jinping has "spearheaded" a campaign to intimidate dissidents living abroad. And as the coronavirus pandemic continues to multiply in hotspots across the US, he described how the Chinese government has moved to pressure American officials to support its response while simultaneously working to steal research on the virus.

"The Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence and it can execute that campaign with authoritarian efficiency," Wray said. "They're calculating, they're persistent, they're patient and they're not subject to the righteous constraints of an open democratic society or the rule of law."