By Entorno and AFP | 2023-09-11

BEIJING -- British authorities have arrested a man who reportedly spied for China at the heart of the government in London, sparking fresh fears over how Beijing gathers intelligence.

The man, whose identity has not been released by UK authorities, denied any involvement in espionage, in a statement released by his lawyers Monday (September 11).

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised his "very strong concerns" about possible Chinese "interference" in democracy with Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the G20 in India on Sunday.

UK police said over the weekend that they had arrested a man in his 20s at his home in Edinburgh for spying, with the Sunday Times reporting he was a researcher in Britain's parliament.

Another man in his 30s had also been arrested, police said.

Both arrests took place in March on suspicion of offences under the Official Secrets Act. The two men had have been bailed until October.

While Beijing has called the claims "political farce," the incident follows a number of recent espionage allegations and revelations that have caused diplomatic furore.

Here are some other ways China has worked to spy on the West and its allies in recent years:

'The wandering balloon'

Last February, US authorities accused China of flying surveillance balloons over Canada, the United States and Latin America.

Beijing is running a "well funded, deliberate programme" to use high-altitude, hard-to-detect balloons for spying on the United States and other countries, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said February 14.

The same day, Tokyo's Defence Ministry said a fresh analysis of unidentified aerial objects that flew over Japan's airspace in recent years -- in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021 -- "strongly" suggests they were Chinese spy balloons.

In Latin America, the spy balloon was detected over Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela.

Erick Saumeth, a military analyst consulted by the digital outlet Cambio Colombia, commented in February that the flight of the balloon over Colombian territory was apparently aimed at photographing four important military bases in the north of the country, near the border with Venezuela, especially the Naval Base in Cartagena, the Air Command of the Air Force in Malambo, and the battalions of Cartagena and Santa Bárbara.

Planes, frigates, submarines, jets, reconnaissance planes, tanks and artillery pieces for anti-aircraft defense are stationed in those places, he said.

Any information the spy balloon was able to obtain in its passage through northern Colombia could be shared with Beijing's allies such as Nicaragua and Venezuela, two countries with which Colombia has had disputes in the past over borders and islands, Saumeth said.

Typical of Chinese officials and state-controlled media, statements coming out of Beijing over the incidents were starkly one-sided and attempted to divert attention from the real issue.

"The wandering balloon" became a popular means in which to describe the international incident.

Cyber warfare

The United States warned in 2022 that China represents "the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat" to its government and private sector.

According to researchers and Western intelligence officials, China has become adept at hacking rival nations' digital systems to gather trade secrets.

In 2021, the United States, NATO and other allies said China had employed "contract hackers" to exploit a breach in Microsoft email systems, giving state security agents access to sensitive information.

Chinese spies have also hacked the US energy department, utility companies, telecommunications firms and universities, according to US government statements and media reports.

Tech fears

In the technology sector, there are concerns that China's state-linked firms would be obliged to share intel with their government.

In 2019, the US Department of Justice charged tech giant Huawei with conspiring to steal US trade secrets, among other offences.

Washington has banned the firm from supplying US government systems and strongly discouraged the use of its equipment in the private sector over fears that it could be compromised.

Huawei denies the charges.

Similar anxiety over TikTok, developed by China's ByteDance, animates Western political debate -- with some lawmakers calling for an outright ban on the app over data security fears.

Industrial and military espionage

Beijing has leaned on Chinese citizens abroad to gather intelligence and steal sensitive technology, according to experts, US lawmakers and media reports.

One of the most high-profile cases was that of Ji Chaoqun, who was in January sentenced to eight years in a US prison for sharing information on possible recruitment targets with Chinese intelligence.

Ji was accused of supplying information about eight people to the Jiangsu province security ministry, an intelligence unit accused of engaging in the theft of US trade secrets.

Last year, a US court sentenced a Chinese intelligence officer to 20 years in prison for stealing technology from US and French aerospace firms.

The man, named Xu Yanjun, was found guilty of playing a leading role in a five-year Chinese state-backed scheme to steal commercial secrets from GE Aviation, one of the world's leading aircraft engine manufacturers, and France's Safran Group.

In 2020, a US court jailed Raytheon engineer Wei Sun -- a Chinese national and naturalised US citizen -- for bringing sensitive information about an American missile system into China on a company laptop.

Spying on politicians

Chinese operatives have allegedly courted political, social and business elites in Britain and the United States.

According to the Sunday Times, the alleged British spy arrested Saturday had contacts with MPs from the ruling Conservative Party while working as a parliamentary researcher and has worked on international policy, including relations with Beijing.

US news website Axios ran an investigation in 2020 claiming that a Chinese student enrolled at a university in California had developed ties with a range of US politicians under the auspices of Beijing's main civilian spy agency.

The student, named Fang Fang, used campaign financing, developed friendships and even initiated sexual relationships to target rising politicians between 2011 and 2015, according to the report.

'Police stations'

Another technique used by Chinese operatives is to tout insider knowledge about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s opaque inner workings and dangle access to top leaders to lure high-profile Western targets, researchers say.

The aim has been to "mislead world leaders about [Beijing's] ambitions" and make them believe "China would rise peacefully -- maybe even democratically," author Alex Joske wrote in his book, "Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World".

Beijing has also exerted pressure on overseas Chinese communities and media organisations to back its policies on Taiwan, and to muzzle criticism of the Hong Kong and Xinjiang crackdowns.

In September 2022, Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders said China had set up 54 overseas "police stations" around the world, allegedly to target Communist Party critics.

According to the report, China has 13 police stations in Latin America: two in Argentina, two in Brazil, two in Chile, one in Colombia, one in Cuba, three in Ecuador, one in Panama and one in Peru.

Beijing has denied all the claims.

The Netherlands ordered China to close two "police stations" there in November.

A month later, the Czech Republic said China had closed two such centers in Prague.