By Alexander Smith,
LONDON England
A parliamentary researcher arrested, two lawmaker candidates withdrawn after security service warnings and a week of anxious whispers about spies in the British corridors of power unlike anything since the Cold War.
Only this time the furor is
about China,
whose alleged espionage to influence governments and target dissidents abroad
is gaining growing attention and criticism in the West.
The revelations rocking
Westminster follow Chinese spying allegations in Canada, Australia and
elsewhere, raising questions about America’s allies and the balancing act they
are trying to navigate between courting and censuring China.
“I have been distinctly
concerned about the position of the British government with regard to China and
its determination to undermine Western nations,” Iain Duncan Smith, a current
lawmaker who was the leader of the Conservative Party from 2001 to 2003, told
NBC News.
He and other China hawks see
the “potential espionage cell operating in and around Westminster” — as he put
it — to be a symptom of a wider malaise: Western countries’ being too soft on
Beijing for fear of hurting their own economies.
The China debate simmering in
Britain for years exploded last weekend when The Times newspaper reported that
a China-focused parliamentary researcher working with lawmakers for the ruling
Conservatives had been arrested in March on suspicion of spying for Beijing.
London’s Metropolitan Police
said in a statement that two men had been arrested under Section 1 of the
Official Secrets Act, legislation relating to espionage, and gathering
information “useful to an enemy.”
As is normal at this stage of
any investigation in the United Kingdom, police did not name either person or
provide any evidence, saying only that one suspect in his 20s was arrested in
Edinburgh, Scotland, and that the other, in his 30s, was arrested in
Oxfordshire, England. Neither has been charged.
The Times and others have
named the researcher, the younger of the two suspects. And while NBC News has
not confirmed that detail, his parliamentary job has been discussed in the
House of Commons and was referred to in his own statement.
“I am completely innocent,”
the man said through lawyers, who did not name him. He criticized the
“extravagant news reporting” and said spying “would be against everything I
stand for,” because he had spent his career “trying to educate others about the
challenge and threats presented” by China.
Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign
Affairs Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called the allegation “entirely
groundless” at a daily news conference Monday. “We urge the U.K. to stop
spreading disinformation and stop political manipulation and malicious slander
against China.”
That has done little to quell
the alarm in Britain.
Days after the arrests were
revealed, The Times reported that Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5,
had warned the Conservative Party that two of its potential candidates for
Parliament could be Chinese spies, leading the party to block them from standing.
A junior health minister,
Maria Caulfield, said Wednesday on Times Radio that the party had indeed been
warned, adding that “swift action was taken.”
The reports are of grave
concern to people like Finn Lau, a leading pro-democracy activist from Hong
Kong who moved to the U.K. and engages with its political institutions, which
he hoped he could trust.
In November, he met with the
parliamentary researcher who was arrested on espionage charges, he said.
“The next time that I saw his
face and name was three days ago in the newspaper,” Lau said. “I was shocked.”
Hong Kong has offered a bounty
of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) for information leading to Lau’s
arrest. Since he started living in the U.K., he said, he has already been
assaulted once, which he believes was politically motivated because the attackers
said nothing and made no attempt to rob him.
And the idea that China might
have compromised sensitive meetings with trusted personnel in and around
Westminster “exposes us to physical harassment and abduction,” he said.
At the heart of it all is a
conundrum that is dogging every country in the West: how to continue trading
with China (to stop would most likely risk mutual economic calamity) while
holding it to account on human rights, espionage and other issues.
Those who want a tougher
stance have criticized the U.K. and Europe for being softer on Beijing than
Washington is, accusing them of favoring economic ties over national security
and ethics.
Duncan Smith, whom China
sanctioned in 2021 for speaking out against its alleged human rights abuses,
says it’s “almost laughable” that Britain won’t officially label China a
“threat” — even after the revelations last week — instead calling it a “systemic
challenge.”
“My concern is that Europe is
behind America,” he added. “It suggests a desire not to upset the Chinese.”
A report from a
British parliamentary committee in July said a lack of clear
government strategy had allowed Beijing to penetrate “every sector” of the U.K.
economy. And Smith is far from the only member of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s
own party to criticize him over the issue after the revelations last week.
“I am acutely aware of the
particular threat to our open and democratic way of life,” Sunak said.
He noted he had raised the issue in meetings with Chinese officials at the
G20 summit in India last weekend, calling Beijing’s actions “completely unacceptable.”
asked for comment on the
criticism, No. 10 Downing St. pointed to Sunak’s comments in Parliament by way
of response.
All major countries spy to some degree, of course. Last month Beijing said it uncovered a Chinese national allegedly spying for the CIA in Italy and was investigating another in Japan.
On Monday, it published new details about a U.S. citizen and Hong
Kong permanent resident who was sentenced to life in prison in May on espionage
charges.
The anxiety cuts both ways,
with China’s previously secretive Ministry of State Security launching a large
and overt publicity campaign encouraging its citizens to help weed out
espionage from all walks of life.
But the scale and tenor of
alleged Chinese operations have alarmed governments and independent experts in
the West.
“We used to say that the
Russians were very precise and sophisticated and the Chinese just hit at
volume,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the International Centre
for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies in Singapore.
“The problem with China now is
that they still operate at that volume — but it’s more sophisticated and
specific than it was before, too.”
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