How China really spies on the UK

1 hour ago Share Save Gordon Corera BBC Security analyst Share Save

BBC

It is a question that successive governments have struggled with: what kind of threat does China really pose to the UK? Trying to answer it may have contributed to the high-profile collapse of the case in which two British men, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, were accused of spying for China and charged under the Official Secrets Act. Both deny wrongdoing - but when charges were dropped last month, it sparked political outcry. Prosecutors and officials have since offered conflicting accounts about whether a failure or unwillingness to label China as an active threat to national security led to the withdrawal of the charges. And yesterday Lord Hermer, the attorney general, blamed "out of date" legislation for the case's collapse. But this all raises the question of what exactly Chinese espionage looks like in the modern world.

AFP via Getty Images What lies at the heart of the problem is that the national security threats China poses today go beyond traditional notions of espionage

On one level, China spies within the traditional framework of the old ways of human espionage associated with the Cold War, with spies working under the cover of being diplomats, and recruiting people to pass secrets. The witness statement by a deputy national security adviser for prosecutors investigating the now-collapsed case of Cash and Berry outlines this kind of work. "The Chinese Intelligence Services are interested in acquiring information from a number of sources, including policymakers, government staff and democratic institutions and are able to act opportunistically to gather all information they can." Here is the thing though. Pretty much every country does this kind of spying - wanting insight into what other countries are up to is as old as the hills. The UK conducts this kind of espionage against China (as China itself has publicly complained about). When countries get caught there is normally a public row but each side knows it is normal business.