Sophia Yan
Just seven years ago, China’s leader Xi Jinping was riding in a gilded, horse-drawn carriage along the Mall, lined with British and Chinese flags, en route to Buckingham Palace, accompanied by the late Queen Elizabeth.
The subject of lavish diplomatic courting, he spent two nights at the Palace, and even enjoyed a pint at a pub with then prime minister David Cameron. It was the beginning of what then chancellor George Osborne insisted would be a “golden decade” of UK-China relations, one that both sides described as rich with immense promise.
Fast forward to this week, when it came to light that two men – one of them a British parliamentary researcher – had been arrested for spying, prompting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to say that he is “acutely aware” that China posed a threat to the UK’s “open and democratic way of life”.
The researcher denies the allegations. The arrests followed a rare “parliamentary interference alert on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party” issued last year by the domestic security service MI5 about the activities of a UK-based lawyer, Christine Lee, who was publicly named as an “agent of influence”.
Lee, who arrived in Britain in 1974 aged just 11, and became legal adviser to the Chinese embassy in 2008, had donated almost half a million pounds to the office of Labour MP Barry Gardiner, with her son working for his office.
Gardiner, for his part, always said he had been “totally transparent” with the security services, and says the payments were legitimate and declared at the time. Lee has vigorously denied the allegations and any wrongdoing and is suing MI5.
The incidents mark a dramatic souring of that once-promising relationship. Gone are the gilded carriages and compliments. Now it is mutual hostility and suspicion that reigns. These days, insiders remark, close links between Beijing and Britain are talked of not as a golden era but as a “golden error”.
Longtime sceptics like Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith say it is “time for us to recognise the deepening threat that the Chinese Communist Party under Xi now poses”. And finally such words may not be falling on deaf ears.
At last, say experts, the UK is being forced radically to redraw its approach in order to protect itself against a sharper, more assertive China, just as more wary countries like America, Canada and Australia have done for years.
It has been a long time coming. Only this July, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) issued a report detailing the foot-dragging and flimsy response to China’s ever-more assertive influence operations.
“It appears that China has a high level of intent to interfere with the UK Government, targeting officials and bodies at a range of levels to influence UK political thinking and decision-making relevant to China,” the report noted, adding that while “the Government says its response is ‘robust’ and ‘clear-eyed’, the external experts we spoke to were rather less complimentary. They felt very strongly that the Government did not have any strategy on China, let alone an effective one.”
At that time the ISC pointed out that it was not even a criminal offence to be an agent of a foreign intelligence service. But this week, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden said the Government was considering forcing anyone working in this country “at the direction” of China to register on a “foreign influence scheme” or face up to five years in jail.
But such a proposal raises a critical question: precisely who is working “at the direction” of China? The answer is potentially many thousands. Because what is tough about dealing with Beijing is that it does not mirror how the West operates, making it harder to understand and pin down.
The reality is that China’s approach to espionage is far more holistic than our own – not confined to a particular agency, not necessarily focused on illegal activity, and not even particularly organised at times. Rather it operates as an opaque spectrum of institutions and activities from soft power lobbying to ruthless, hard-nosed, well-armed spy games.
Everything, however, points toward the same end: procuring knowledge and influence in order to shape the world in China’s favour, allowing it to become the pre-eminent power of the 21st century. And that serves the ultimate goal: to keep the ruling Communist Party on top, with leader Xi Jinping at its peak.
Influence work, after all, runs through Mr Xi’s family history. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was key in such work involving Tibet, seeking to influence figures like the Dalai Lama. Two of his siblings were also involved in political warfare work on behalf of the military, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
And Mr Xi himself spent much of his political career in Fujian province – just across the ocean from Taiwan – which is perhaps the epicentre of China’s intelligence efforts given its proximity to the island nation that China claims as its own territory.
“The goal is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” said Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a US defence policy think tank, and former CIA analyst. “For them, it’s about ‘how do we shape the world in ways that moves the Party closer to its objectives?’ ”
And those objectives are many and varied: from culling pesky votes on the UN Security Council; pushing nations away from Taiwan; silencing criticism over human rights abuses in Xinjiang; to encouraging greater global trade dependency on China.
To China, policies conducted abroad are all about supporting internal interests – preserving its own national security and domestic stability.
Here’s a look at how different parts of the Chinese government approach espionage and influence operations.
Ministry of State Security
China’s MSS is the most fearsome and secretive agency of all – the principal organisation overseeing domestic and foreign intelligence and counterintelligence.
On the street, they’re the secret police who appear to have limitless reach. They seem to operate with impunity, and with the idea that might makes right. MSS agents would have been the ones, for instance, to have snatched Canadian citizens Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig in China in late 2018 – tit-for-tat hostage diplomacy after Ottawa arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US extradition request.
The “two Michaels”, as they came to be known, were arbitrarily detained for nearly three years – a way to punish Canada for acting in concert with the US.
The agency has always operated in the shadows, though has recently taken the unusual step of opening a social media account – part of a growing emphasis on counter-espionage work.
The MSS has used the account to call on Chinese citizens to participate in forming a “line of defence” to assist in counter-espionage, and to publicise cases of caught spies.
The current minister, Chen Yixin, comes from a political background, rather than intelligence and security, which may indicate Mr Xi’s interest in maintaining political control over every part of government.
United Front Work Department
As China’s “magic weapon” – so-called by Mr Xi – this is the Chinese agency the general public in countries around the world is most likely to have encountered. Broadly speaking, a core part of the United Front’s work is exerting influence abroad – efforts to shape what’s known and understood of China and to promote the Beijing narrative.
United Front has infiltrated foreign parliaments and governments. In 2017, senior Australian politician Sam Dastyari quit after a scandal over Chinese-linked political donations. In March of this year, Canadian MP Han Dong stepped down from his party amid allegations that he had advised Chinese diplomats and assisted with election interference. Both Dastyari and Han denied wrongdoing. A week ago, Canada announced a public inquiry into how China and Russia may have interfered in federal elections in 2019 and 2021.
UFW officials and agents are known to develop long-term relationships with key players to influence, subvert or circumvent local government laws and policies in favour of the Party.
People acting on behalf of the UFW conduct a range of activities – whispering in the right ears, suggesting talking points favourable to China, making campaign donations. None of that necessarily crosses the line into criminality, though it is one part of the continuum, maintaining China’s power and influence, and gaining knowledge to cement the upper hand.
Such activity is believed to have reached into the UK. Christine Lee, for example, was alleged to have “acted covertly in co-ordination” with the United Front, and was “judged to be involved in political interference activities in the UK.”
She has since gone to court to force British intelligence to reveal why it issued that warning; her claim is that her human rights were breached. Lee denies being an agent of the communist state.
Christine Lee was ‘judged to be involved in political interference activities in the UK’ Credit: Nigel Howard Media
Confucius Institutes, attached to universities in the UK and elsewhere, also fall under UFW. China says these are simply language and cultural centres – a benign, soft power effort.
While the institutes do offer Mandarin classes, they are administered directly by Beijing and impart the “Chinese view” – for instance, a whitewashing of hot-button topics such as 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre, and the sovereignty of Taiwan, which China claims as its own.
Other groups that form the public face of UFW include the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association; the latter, like Confucius Institutes, are attached to universities, and have been linked to pro-China demonstrations on school campuses.
The monitoring and intimidation of Chinese dissidents overseas, or anyone deemed to pose a threat to the ruling Party, can fall under the jurisdiction of MSS over national security concerns, the UFW over interests in neutralising opposition, or even the Ministry of Public Security, given its responsibility for policing Chinese citizens, both at home and abroad.
People’s Liberation Army
China’s military – the largest in the world at 2.8 million strong – has a strong interest in gathering foreign military secrets, backed by technological and practical know-how.
A Chinese spy balloon programme – potentially run by military contractors – was discovered this year after one such vessel was spotted floating across the US, hovering above sensitive military installations. The balloons were reportedly gathering information – data similar to what satellites can glean – and then bringing everything collected back to China.
China is also trying to improve its military prowess, hiring former foreign military pilots to train Chinese pilots. On the face of it, this may not fit the standard definition of espionage, but it is a piece of China’s so-called “whole-of-state” efforts to serve its broader interests – to advance its technological and practical capabilities.
Earlier this year the Royal Air Force’s chief, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, said recruiting ex-RAF pilots was “unacceptable … it’s something that we were prepared to call China out publicly.”
Spying activities have stretched even into the US military. Just last month, two US Navy officers with security clearances were arrested for transmitting sensitive military information to China.
Jinchao Wei, an active-duty sailor on the USS Essex in San Diego, allegedly sent to Chinese intelligence photos and videos about Navy ships, as well as technical and mechanical manuals that detailed various systems aboard the USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship that resembles a small aircraft carrier.
Another US Navy officer, Wenheng Zhao, was charged with receiving bribes in exchange for sending information about major US military exercises in the Indo-Pacific region to someone posing as a maritime economic researcher, who was in fact a Chinese intelligence officer, according to the US Department of Justice.
Both have pleaded not guilty in the ongoing case, and could face up to 20 years in prison.
Cyber and corporate espionage
Much of China’s military spying comes in the form of cyber-espionage, with military hackers seeking to purloin secret information that could help its own military operations or broader Chinese commercial interests.
For example, when the nuclear power firm Westinghouse was building four power plants in China and negotiating terms of construction with a Chinese firm – including technology transfers – hackers instead took a shortcut: stealing the company’s proprietary technical and design specifications.
China-backed hackers have also targeted foreign government agencies, as well as officials’ email and social media accounts, trying to glean a sense of what’s said behind closed doors to help shape its own approach.
In the months leading up to her official trip to Beijing last month, for example, Gina Raimondo, US secretary of commerce, was among a number of US officials whose emails were hacked and stolen. It has been reported that the emails of both the US ambassador to China and Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, were also breached.
Other hacks, at times conducted by MSS, have been directed at top defence and technology companies, seeking to steal sensitive military and commercial specs.
One group, known as APT10, has been accused of stealing aviation, space and satellite technology, even targeting a Nasa lab. But APT10’s activities have hit an astonishingly wide range of companies, from biotech to mining, and in at least 12 countries, including the UK and US. And that’s just a single group.
Chinese companies themselves have also been known to engage in corporate espionage – stealing agricultural trade secrets, the specs for gas and steam turbines, or advanced chip designs.
Take the case of Chinese national Mo Hailong, who was spotted, in 2012, crouched in the Iowa cornfields digging up seeds potentially worth millions. Four years later, he pleaded guilty in a US court for stealing the patent-protected seed from Monsanto and DuPont to send back to China for commercial use. Even today, American farmers worry about this.
“In my opinion, it’s part of a much larger, country-wide, slow-motion heist of American intellectual property,” Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman, said a few days ago. “We have a duty to protect all our technology, whether it’s in Silicon Valley or in a cornfield here in Iowa.”
Everything, everyone, everywhere
The biggest challenge with China’s espionage efforts is that they are ubiquitous, and can include activities that are perfectly legal. Even ordinary Chinese citizens abroad are being co-opted into acting on behalf of the state.
Some do so of their own volition, having grown up in a propaganda-heavy environment promoting nationalist tendencies. Others are forced to do so after Chinese authorities hold their family at home hostage.
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