It is once again an employee of a foreign consulting company who is targeted in this affair described as “espionage” by the official Chinese press. The consultant from a “third country” is suspected of having been employed by the English services to carry out research on a sector labeled “national security” by the authorities and to recruit contact persons in China.
Fourteen state secrets
The official statement does not specify which “third country” it is, nor the industry concerned, but accuses the alleged spy of having provided state secrets to the United Kingdom. Nicknamed “Huang”, the suspect was reportedly approached by MI6 in 2015 for an intelligence mission. He would also have been trained and equipped for this purpose. “After careful investigation, the national security agency quickly discovered criminal evidence that Huang provided the British side with nine top-class state secrets, five top-class state secrets and three intelligence items », says the Beijing News.
Spies on every floor
This is not the first time that London and Beijing have fought over this issue. Arrests of “foreign spies” have accelerated since the announcement of the revision of the law on counter-espionage in spring 2023. The authorities see spies on all levels and state security, until now discreet on the subject, has multiplied the “revelations”, going so far as to denounce the use of weather stations for surveillance and espionage purposes. Suspected of working for the Americans or the Japanese and today for the British, all have been accused of entering the expanded list of activities which can now be considered as espionage.
This article is originally published on .rfi.fr
