Federal prosecutors on Friday warned of a recent increase in Chinese economic espionage and called Boston the perfect place for it.

“Boston is a target-rich environment for anyone who is interested in intellectual property,” John C. Demers, assistant attorney general for national security, said at a media roundtable discussion here. “And 90 percent of our cases involving economic espionage originates from the Chinese government.”

Andrew E. Lelling, U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts, said his office has seen “what appears to be an uptick in this activity over the last year.”

The reasons for the increase are unclear, Lelling said, but one may be that companies are becoming more sensitized to the threat.

“Russia is not the only actor in this space,” he said. “There are other countries. And China is one of them.”

Last June, for example, Shuren Qin, a Chinese national living in Wellesley, was arrested on charges of conspiring to illegally export American goods used in anti-submarine warfare to China. The case is still pending.

“Boston is a node for this activity,” Lelling said, because of the numbers of universities, defense contractors and other technology companies, and Chinese nationals on visas here.

Most of those people are here for legitimate reasons, Demers said.

“We want to encourage people to come here and study,” Lelling said. “This isn’t about targeting everyone who’s a Chinese national. But there are thousands who are directly linked to a state-sponsored effort to steal intellectual property.”

The Justice Department recently launched “the China Initiative” to address that country’s “long-term, persistent effort to steal American intellectual property,” he said.

Part of the initiative is getting universities and companies to realize they are potential targets.

“You could be targeted from the outside in,” Demers said, “But there’s always the risk that you are being targeted from the inside out.”

The FBI does training on demand for companies and universities to help them know what to look for, Lelling said.

One cautionary case in point is Massachusetts-based American Superconductor, which seemed to be doing well in early 2011, until its biggest customer, Beijing-based Sinovel Wind Group Co., refused to accept a shipment of electronic components for its wind turbines or pay millions of dollars it owed for them.

American Superconductor alleged that Sinovel had found the source code for its electronic components and was using a pirated version in the turbines it sold.

Last year, a federal jury found Sinovel guilty of stealing trade secrets, and the company was ordered to pay $59 million in fines and restitution to American Superconductor.