🔗 Share this article

An unexpected contact on LinkedIn. A proposal of work from a headhunter, most likely a female agent, operating from China. The opportunity to earn perhaps £20,000 on the side writing a small number of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or privileged insights. Compensation in digital currency or physical money favored.

It might appear obvious, in this scenario, that an element about this approach would be suspicious. Nevertheless, China’s powerful intelligence agency still considers it valuable to deploy headhunters to attempt this – leading the domestic spy agency to warn repeatedly about their activity on the internet.

Massive Contact Attempts on Professional Networks

Last year, the head of MI5 the agency's director said operatives from China were contacting UK citizens on the platform on an extraordinary scale, at a frequency of ten thousand over the previous 30-month period, seeking governmental, industrial, military and technological classified information. But a fresh campaign targeting elected officials and parliament has prompted the spy agency to act again.

An espionage alert was distributed on this week via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle and his Lords counterpart: a single slide after the persistent attempts of Shirly Shen and other operatives to reach out to Members of Parliament, peers, their staffers, economic experts, thinktanks – anybody who might provide information.

Security Approach and Legislative Changes

In the typical style of UK security services, there was no official release of the security advice from MI5 or the interior ministry. Yet the agency was aware its briefing note would become public once it was sent electronically out to parliament. Republishing it in the media helps the wider public more easily recognize interactions with a deceptive intent.

This warning has the impact of uncovering additional details from in and around parliament, though that is not the agency's main objective. The agency aims for public figures to understand that simply because interactions on professional networks are less overtly risky as on other social platforms, it doesn't imply they are completely safe.

Nor is internal security service understood to have been reacting to a particular event in the legislature, though the burst of activity occur after the awkward collapse of the prosecution of a former parliamentary aide an individual and his associate Christopher Berry on a legal detail earlier in the autumn.

Both individuals had been charged of working for the foreign power – a charge they rejected – but failure to successfully conclude a trial under the since replaced Official Secrets Act resulted in concerns that the UK's political system had been insufficiently defended.

Revised Laws and China's Strategic Interests

Legislation has now been changed, and the security briefing includes a note of its replacement: “Those engaging in spying operations face significant criminal penalties under the new security law.” It is a crime if a person participates in behavior that could potentially “materially assist a foreign intelligence service”.

An obvious question, though, is what China has to gain. An elected representative who is not a government minister will have restricted knowledge of classified material, and an contact of theirs less so. But the Chinese government is also interested in parliament: for a time, in recent years, the UK’s China policy on issues such as Huawei or the human rights situation or alleged atrocities was being driven by MPs.

Cultural Differences and Ongoing Cyber Risks

In part there are cultural differences too. Authoritarian governments like China’s export information gathering techniques and the size of its intelligence apparatus is enormous, engaging three hundred thousand people. Chris Inglis, a American cybersecurity head under the US administration, commented it was sometimes estimated that “China have greater linguistic capacity involved in this than we [western intelligence] have English speakers”.

Beijing is willing to cultivate contacts over the extended period and sometimes even the agencies have found it difficult to distinguish between legitimate relationships and spying. “Beijing has a low threshold for what information is deemed to be of value,” the minister responsible Dan Jarvis told MPs on this week, but a rapid shift in the political cycle may mean someone rapidly peripheral turning significant.

Another way to consider the continuous activities at secret intelligence collection is in the wider context of the geopolitical contest between China and the west at a level under the level of outright war. The nation has increased its hacking efforts, with the Salt Typhoon infiltration of phone and data networks in numerous nations, and the Volt Typhoon compromise of countless internet devices.

Chinese authorities is involved in persistent attempts to identify covert sources on British democracy via digital means because it wants to be provocative, to display power and because it can.