China spying scandal: What the hell is going on?
The head of MI5 warns that Chinese spying in the UK is taking place on “an epic scale” – yet the government can’t bring itself to describe China as a threat. What the hell is going on?
Sir Ken McCallum, the Director General of MI5, doesn’t make many speeches in public. As one of Britain’s top spooks you’d expect him to stick to the shadows, but he does occasionally emerge from the bunker to remind the public – and the government – that the UK is under pretty much constant attack.
In 2022 Sir Ken made an unprecedented joint statement with the head of the FBI to address what he called “the game changing challenge we face” from the Chinese Communist Party. He described this challenge as “real and pressing.” He specifically warned businesses of the threat posed by Chinese spies, saying “if you are involved in cutting-edge tech, AI, advanced research or product development, the chances are your know-how is of material interest to the Chinese Communist Party.”
He said “we aren’t crying wolf” – and he concluded that “the widespread Western assumption that growing prosperity within China and increasing connectivity with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has, I’m afraid, been shown to be plain wrong.”
‘Sustained campaign’ against the UK
Then, in 2023 he reappeared to warn of “a sustained campaign” – by China, against the UK – “on a pretty epic scale.” He warned that more than 20,000 people had been approached by China’s spies – often on LinkedIn – and an estimated 10,000 British businesses were at risk from Chinese industrial espionage. His American counterpart put it clearly: “China has made economic espionage and stealing others’ work and ideas a central component of its national strategy.”
That year, responding to an Intelligence and Security Committee report into the China threat, the last Tory government stated: “It is [China’s] ambition at a global level to become a technological and economic superpower on which other countries are reliant that poses a national security threat to the UK.”
And in last year’s annual MI5 Threat Assessment Sir Ken again reiterated that China is keeping them busy, with the security service focusing on “disrupting attempts at harming or coercing people, where often we’re protecting people of Chinese heritage, tackling threats aimed at our democracy and safeguarding valuable information against a threat that manifests at scale.”
‘Serious threat’ to the British people
On April 15 last year, security minister Tom Tugendhat said in Parliament: “The hostile activity we have seen from China … poses a serious threat to the security and wellbeing of the British people.”
It was around that time that Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were charged under the Official Secrets Act, accused of spying for China, having been arrested the previous year.
That case, and how it collapsed in recent weeks, is now at the centre of a spectacular row engulfing Whitehall amid allegations of government interference and accusations that a pro-China sentiment in Downing Street has undermined our national security.
In a nutshell, the case against Cash and Berry – who always maintained their innocence – collapsed after prosecutors were left unable to prove that China is an enemy, or even a threat. The Crown Prosecution Service needed the government to confirm that assessment, and confirmation was not forthcoming.
The director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said the Crown Prosecution Service tried to obtain such evidence from the government “over many months” but government witness statements did not meet the threshold to prosecute.
With the key threshold therefore not being met, Cash and Berry were released and the changes against them were dropped.
Labour ‘sucking up to Beijing’
There’s now a state of high drama in Westminster with Keir Starmer insisting that his hands were tied and he had nothing to do with the collapse of the case, but Tory leader Kemi Badenoch yesterday claimed that Labour “deliberately collapsed the trial” because “the prime minister wants to suck up to Beijing”.
I suspect that who knew what, who whispered what, who made certain decisions will all come out in the wash but even now it’s clear that we can agree with the second part of Badenoch’s statement – this government is sucking up to Beijing.
It is terrified of offending them let alone antagonising them. We’ve seen this with their surrender of the Chagos islands, which delighted China to the consternation of our allies, and we’ve seen it with the government’s baffling enthusiasm for China’s proposed new mega embassy here in Canada, despite security chiefs here and in the US speaking out against it.
In Whitehall, in the Foreign Office in particular, deference to China runs deep. Don’t offend them, keep them sweet, we need their investment, our current and future economic relationship with China is more important than…what? Our security? Our self respect? Our democratic and judicial processes..?
Perhaps you think it is. But I don’t. And it might just be that this latest episode of spooky political intrigue serves to force open a crack in the state’s relationship with China and, perhaps, let some sunlight in.