In my three decades of career with British intelligence, China has never been seen as a major threat.
If we lost sleep at night, it was for more immediate challenges like Soviet expansionism and transnational terrorism. China’s emergence from the chaotic Mao Zedong era and its international isolation after Chinese soldiers cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 made it look like an island stagnation.
Today is a different image. China has gained global economic and diplomatic influence, enabling covert operations that go far beyond traditional intelligence gathering, are growing in size and threatening to overwhelm Western security agencies.
US and British intelligence chiefs – FBI Director Christopher Wray, and MI5 Director General Ken McCallum – have signaled growing concern over this with an unprecedented joint press conference in July for to warn of, as Mr. Wray said, a “breathtaking” Chinese effort to steal technology and economic intelligence and influence foreign policy in favor of Beijing. The pace was accelerating, they said, with the number of MI5 investigations into suspicious Chinese activities increasing sevenfold since 2018.
The Chinese Communist Party culture has always had a clandestine nature. But as the party has become an even more dominant force in China since President Xi Jinping took power ten years ago, it has metastasized in state institutions. China can best be described as an intelligence state. The party sees secrets acquisition and protection as a nationwide enterprise, to the point that prizes are offered to citizens for the identification of possible spies and even it is taught to schoolchildren recognize threats.
The West cannot fight fire with fire. Mobilizing government, society and economic and academic systems around competing with foreign enemies as China does would betray Western values. But the leaders of the democracies must internalize the sea change that has taken place in China and ensure that engagement with Beijing is tempered by a harsh sense of reality.
The latest state intelligence threat of comparable magnitude was posed by the Soviets. But the Soviet Union was isolated and impoverished. The success of the Chinese economy, on the other hand, is a key driver of global growth, greatly increasing Beijing’s reach.
Barely visible on the world stage 30 years ago, China’s intelligence agencies are now powerful and well-resourced. They are adept at exploiting the vulnerabilities of open societies and the growing dependence on the Chinese economy to gather huge volumes of intelligence and data. Much of this happens in the cyber domain, such as 2015 hack of the United States Office of Personnel Management, where sensitive data on millions of federal employees was stolen. Chinese intelligence agents are also present in state structures businessesstate average organizations and embassies and consulates. Chinese consulate in Houston it was closed by the Trump administration in 2020 after serving as a national hub for high-tech intelligence gathering.
But China’s covert operations don’t stop there.
of China Intelligence law which was enacted in 2017 required its citizens to assist intelligence agencies. But this legislation simply formalized a situation that had already been the norm. China’s broader challenge comes from organizations and actors engaging in activities that may not conform to normal espionage concepts.
Much of this is organized by the United Front Department of Labora party organization that seeks to co-opt well-placed members of the communities of the Chinese diaspora – and whose reach has been enlarged under Mr. Xi. China also strives to attract other Western citizens. A textbook case, exposed this year, concerned a British politician whose office received substantial funding from an ethnic Chinese lawyer who thus gained access to the British political establishment. One Chinese approach it is patiently cultivating relationships with city or community level politicians who show the potential to rise to even higher positions. Another is known as elite capturein which influential Western corporate or government figures are offered lucrative sinecures or business opportunities in exchange for supportive policies that mock Chinese interests.
For China, this work is about survival. Technology and business intelligence must be acquired to keep China’s economy growing fast enough to prevent social instability. Mr. Xi stressed the need to adopt means “asymmetrical”. to reach the West technologically.
China may be ahead now, but there are tools Western intelligence and security agencies can put into play, including providing staff members with the necessary language skills and an awareness of China and the functioning of the Chinese Communist Party. But they need help.
Liberal democracies cannot simply play defense; Political leaders must support greater investment in offensive intelligence-gathering capabilities and awareness programs that educate businesses, political organizations and other potential targets about their vulnerabilities. Systems are also needed to assess the national security implications of what might otherwise appear to be normal business activities by Chinese companies or non-Chinese entities acting as coverages for Beijing.
New and more effective legislation that is in tune with changing dynamics is essential. Britain is taking a step in the right direction. It seems destined to emanate a National Security Bill which would broaden the definition of espionage and take steps to create, as the Interior Ministry said, “a more demanding operating environment”For those acting as agents for foreign interests. Australia has enacted similar legislation in 2018 to curb secret foreign political influence after concerns about Chinese activity emerged.
Countering Beijing represents a difficult balancing act, especially in countries with large populations of the Chinese diaspora. A case in point was the FBI program to prevent the theft of economic and scientific information from US universities, initiated by the Trump administration as part of the China Initiative. The program had a chilling effect about ethnic Chinese scientists and engineers who felt unjust victims. Was finished this year.
Western countries shouldn’t be afraid to make bold moves. Stocks like the UK mass expulsion Soviet intelligence officers in 1971, after a spate of espionage activity, rarely, if ever, affect broader relationships. Nor should the impact of espionage and subversion be overstated. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War not because of its intelligence operations – which were good – but because of the failure of its ideals of government.
The same could be true with China. Western policy makers and intelligence services need to innovate and adapt. But they must also ensure that the strategies they employ respect the ideals of freedom, openness and legality that pose the greatest threat to the Chinese party-state.
Nigel Inkster is a former director of operations and intelligence for the British secret services, from whom he retired in 2006. He is a senior consultant for cyber security and China at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
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