All A Bit Much

Nathan Levine writes:

The revelation that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of being a Chinese spy has sent Westminster “reeling” and left the British political establishment in “shock”. Or that, at least, is the impression offered by London’s news media, which has covered the scandal with barely contained excitement.

That China’s agents would dare to infiltrate the heart of the British government has been widely portrayed as an unprecedented development. “This is a major escalation by China,” one anonymous senior Whitehall source told The Times, which broke the news, adding that: “We have never seen anything like this before.” It is hard to know whether such sentiments are genuine or exaggerated for effect. Either way, they seem rather overwrought.

China has been engaged in extensive espionage operations in Britain, and around the world, for decades. As a 2021 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee stated accurately: “China almost certainly maintains the largest state intelligence apparatus in the world.” Moreover, as the report also noted, China employs a “whole-of-state” approach to espionage, co-opting a range of state and non-state actors, as well as ordinary citizens at home and abroad, to help carry out this work. Chinese students studying abroad, for example, may sometimes be pressured by the government into reporting information back to Beijing — though far more often about the activities of their fellow ethnic Chinese students than state secrets.

It is true that, in recent years, a rising China has escalated its overseas intelligence operations. Since he came to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has made what he calls “comprehensive national security” the central priority for China’s party-state. He has handed China’s premier foreign intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), along with its military equivalents in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), greater authority and more resources both old and new (such as cyber) to more assertively collect intelligence, protect Chinese interests and project Chinese influence worldwide. The result has been the uncovering of a litany of hacks, thefts and scandals. Of these, the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States in February may have been the most high-profile, but was among the least successful and consequential (as compared with, say, MSS’s massive 2015 breach of US government security clearance records).

But this is simply what nation-states, and especially the world’s major powers, do. Though perhaps distasteful, it should hardly be a shock. In fact, Britain should be particularly familiar with the business, given its history as an epicentre of the Cold War spy game. Those who walk the corridors of power in Westminster and think the present situation is unprecedented had best read up on the Cambridge Five.

Of course, Britain and its allies in the Western world are also spying on China — as we taxpaying citizens might reasonably hope they would be, if China really is the security “challenge” our governments say it is. In July, CIA Director Bill Burns did not shy away from saying publicly that the agency had “made progress” in rebuilding and expanding its spy network in China, years after Chinese counter-intelligence managed to identify and kill nearly all of the CIA’s agents operating in the country, following a 2010 intelligence breach (potentially the work of either a mole or cracked encryption).

There is some evidence that our spies have been wildly successful of late — at living rent-free in Xi’s head, anyway. Because whatever the furore in London, it pales in comparison with the escalating level of paranoia about hidden hands and foreign forces that has emerged in Beijing in recent years. Not only is China in the middle of a sweeping ongoing counter-espionage campaign — with the MSS currently calling on the public to engage in a “whole of society mobilisation” to hunt down spies and traitors, and triumphantly highlighting arrests on its new social media account — but more serious, if mysterious, goings-on higher up hint that Xi’s concerns about the loyalty of his people could be playing havoc within the Chinese system.

The breaking news on Thursday night was that China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, had been arrested and placed under investigation. The source for this information was, of course, US intelligence. But the fact had already been rumoured in China, as he had not been seen in public in weeks. Li’s fate seems linked to that of two top generals of the PLA Rocket Force (which oversees China’s nuclear weapons) who were hauled away a few months ago. The Force’s deputy commander, meanwhile, allegedly committed suicide. China’s short-lived foreign minister, Qin Gang, also suddenly disappeared and was replaced without explanation this summer.

There is no evidence, to be clear, that any of these officials were engaged in or suspected of espionage. The more likely explanation is old-fashioned corruption. The persistent rumour in China is that the PLA Rocket Force generals had taken money Xi handed them to expand China’s nuclear arsenal and pilfered it instead. Li, who previously ran the PLA’s equipment procurement department, may have been involved. But it seems plausible that the current atmosphere of extreme suspicion regarding foreign infiltration and subversion contributed to these officials’ exposure and removal, with Xi now no longer trusting the reliability of anyone, especially in his national security apparatus. Corruption itself can, after all, open the door to foreign intelligence services willing to wield blackmail or simply offer additional cash.

This distrust is particularly clear in Qin’s case. The ex-foreign minister disappeared after a Phoenix TV reporter strongly hinted that he’d had an extramarital affair (and fathered a secret child) with her while they were both previously stationed in Washington, DC. Since many Chinese officials have mistresses without facing any repercussions, and because Qin was previously considered personally favoured by Xi, some suspect that it was the fact that he’d engaged in his covert indiscretions only a few miles from Langley that was of greater concern. Naturally, the online rumour in China is that the TV reporter, Fu Xiaotian (who has also disappeared), was in fact herself an MSS agent deployed to Washington undercover.

Whatever the truth of these specific salacious cases, it is absolutely clear that Xi is quite convinced that the West and its agents are hell-bent on infiltrating China and subverting Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule. Because Western countries “have always regarded China’s development and growth as a threat to Western values and institutions”, he thundered at an assembly of top party leaders in 2016, these countries “have not for a moment ceased their ideological infiltration of China”.

In this, he was merely echoing a long series of similar declarations, as in 2013, when he warned that said “hostile forces” were “doing their utmost to propagate so-called ‘universal values’” with an aim to “vie with us [on] the battlefields of people’s hearts”, split up China “overtly and covertly”, and ultimately “overthrow our socialist system”. For Xi, China is engaged in an “extraordinarily fierce” global ideological struggle with Western liberalism that, “although invisible, [is] a matter of life and death”.

Western leaders don’t necessarily disagree. President Joe Biden regularly describes the United States as engaged in a global “battle between democracy and autocracy”. Former President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, went so far as to insist while in office that the United States must “engage and empower the Chinese people” to enact regime change, because, he asserted, “if the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change us”. British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, for his part, this week vowed not only to improve security but to “defend our democracy” — implying that undermining it must be Beijing’s actual target, rather than mundane intelligence gathering.

Both China and the West, therefore, not only suspect infiltration by the agents of their foreign competitors, but demonstrably view this as part of a much wider, more threatening, and more enduring struggle between rival systems. The hard truth, then, is that, in a very real sense, we’ve all been thrust back into an era much akin to the Cold War, when constant spying and attempted subversion were simply geopolitical facts of life. It may be best for leaders in Westminster, and indeed in capitals around the world, to come to terms with this not-so-unprecedented reality, and to move forward with open eyes: prepared, serious, and without naivety about what’s happening — but also without any undue shock and outrage. Surely the nation of James Bond, at least, can manage to carry on with good cheer.

And Tim Black writes:

On 13 March this year, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak wrote of the ‘epoch-defining and systemic challenge posed by China under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’, as part of the government’s Integrated Review Refresh. These harsh words may have marked a significant departure from the so-called golden era of UK-China cooperation of the 2010s. But they weren’t harsh enough for many members of Britain’s Sino-sceptic political class, for whom nothing less than declaring China an existential threat is enough.

On the same day that this Integrated Review Refresh was published, the police were busy arresting and interviewing two men, including most notably a parliamentary researcher, on suspicion of spying for the CCP. If that was mere coincidence, what happened last Sunday seems a little more organised. Details of the March arrest were finally made public by The Sunday Times, at the very moment Sunak was spending his weekend at the G20 summit in India, alongside Chinese premier Li Qiang. To all intents and purposes, this well-timed leak looked like an attempt to pressure Sunak into doing what, in the eyes of anti-China politicians, he failed to do in March – that is, call China a direct threat to the UK.

The behaviour this week of those Tory politicians, all with a long history of animus towards China, has only reinforced that impression. They have treated the China spy allegations as proof of the profound enmity of China, proof of the CCP’s determination to insert itself at the highest levels of the British state.

Their claims have been feverish. Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith said that it is time to recognise ‘the deepening threat that the CCP under [President] Xi now poses’. His colleague, Tim Loughton, talked of ‘how far the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party reach into British institutions’, before concluding that ‘we cannot view the CCP as anything other than a hostile foreign threat’. Not to be out-hyped, one-time prime minister Liz Truss asserted that ‘China is the largest threat, both to the world and to the United Kingdom, for freedom and democracy’. Which, let’s be honest, is all a bit much.

Of course, there’s little doubt that China’s national interests sometimes conflict with Britain’s. Or that the CCP’s repressive actions at home and abroad deserve condemnation. Or that its overtures towards Taiwan are particularly troubling. It’s clear that Britain’s relationship with China requires serious, constant diplomatic negotiation.

But there’s nothing careful or diplomatic about what is happening here. Mainly Tory politicians, backed up by members of the security establishment and the media, have eagerly seized on this story of an alleged spy to affirm their rather lurid fantasies of China’s malevolence.

We shouldn’t be relaxed about potential breaches to national security. Perhaps Chinese secret agents really have infiltrated British institutions. Perhaps IDS is right that there’s an ‘espionage cell’ at work in Westminster, its invisible hand shaping all manner of policy decisions. But so far there’s very little evidence to suggest that’s the case.

Take the arrested parliamentary researcher at the centre of the current furore. From what is in the public domain, he hardly seems like a potential threat to national security. Yes, he spent two years in China working for the British Council. But apart from that there’s not all that much else to go on. He sounds as privileged and awkward as the rest of the inhabitants of the Westminster village. According to the papers, he’s a privately educated young Brit who has worked for several Tory ministers. Apparently, he also once flirted with a female Sun journalist on a dating app by, er, showing off about his knowledge of China.

For his part, he has strenuously denied the allegations, claiming that he has tried ‘to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist Party’. Indeed, he worked with some Tory MPs involved in the China Research Group, a parliamentary faction highly critical of China. If he was meant to be helping promote Chinese interests in parliament, as some reports have suggested, he wasn’t doing a very good job.

Perhaps more damning details will emerge – he is due to answer bail next month. But at this stage his arrest is hardly evidence of CCP ‘tentacles’ reaching deep into Britain’s institutions.

We’ve been in this situation before – in which a sketchy report of Chinese spying generates political heat, but no light. In January 2022, MI5 issued a security alert, warning parliamentarians that a suspected Chinese spy called Christine Lee was engaged in ‘political interference activities’ on behalf of the CCP. This seemed to chiefly involve donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to Labour MP Barry Gardiner – all of which was public knowledge.

Quite what prompted MI5 to issue a warning about Lee remains unclear. What is clear is that no charges were ever brought. In June, it emerged that she is suing MI5 for breaching her human rights.

What makes this confected panic about CCP espionage doubly absurd is how carelessly and unseriously many in parliament treat issues of national security. During the 2000s and early 2010s, ministers were constantly flashing important documents to photographers as they pranced down Downing Street. In 2015, officials even had to warn politicians to ensure nothing they take out of No10 is visible to photographers.

Not that this stemmed the tide of political indiscretion. There’s Boris Johnson, who was famed for leaving confidential documents strewn around his Downing Street flat when he was PM. There’s home secretary Suella Braverman, who didn’t just break security protocols by sending confidential information to the private email address of a fellow MP – she also sent it to his wife and, by accident, to a member of parliamentary staff. And just a few weeks ago, it emerged that immigration minister Robert Jenrick had left ministerial boxes unattended on a train.

With politicians as careless as this, who needs spies? Indeed, the BBC reported this week that security services have had to warn government officials not to discuss sensitive work in pubs around parliament ‘for fear that agents of hostile states are eavesdropping’. That they even have to be told not to blab about affairs of the state in the Red Lion or the Westminster Arms should set a thousand alarm bells ringing.

The current attempts to hype up the threat of CCP espionage, and push the government into adopting a harder line against China, seem all too cynical. With geopolitical tensions especially heightened today, the nature of Britain’s relationship with China requires serious thought – and serious politicians. Given this week’s posturing over unproven allegations of spying, there doesn’t appear to be many of those in parliament at the moment.