The heads of the United States (US) and United Kingdom’s (UK) intelligence agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and MI5, warned on Wednesday that Chinese espionage in the West has reached “game-changing” levels. In a joint statement, MI5 chief Ken McCallum and FBI Director Chris Wray claimed that espionage by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is one of the biggest threats to global security.
McCallum said that the CCP is “covertly applying pressure across the globe,” adding, “This might feel abstract. But it’s real and it’s pressing. We need to talk about it. We need to act.”
Quoting President Xi Jinping, McCallum said China aims to overtake the West by 2050 through “asymmetrical steps.” The MI5 chief noted this meant that “if you are involved in cutting-edge tech, AI, advanced research or product development, the chances are your know-how is of material interest to the CCP,” before going on to say: “And if you have, or are trying for, a presence in the Chinese market, you’ll be subject to more attention than you might think.”
He also outlined the many ways Beijing seeks to undermine the UK and the US’ security and resources, claiming that Chinese agents are constantly engaging in economic espionage and stealing trade secrets, especially secrets related to the US aviation sector.
Furthermore, McCallum claimed China has been exploiting research to acquire a “cutting edge national security advantage” and has sent researchers from universities affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to study in the UK and the US. The US even stopped issuing visas in certain fields for PLA researchers in 2020, he noted.
Today in London, #FBI Director Christopher Wray and #MI5 Director General Ken McCallum addressed the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, and why partnerships are crucial to combating it. Read more at: https://t.co/ASdtLyGbpc. pic.twitter.com/sjaOpXFRDG
— FBI (@FBI) July 6, 2022
He asserted that the CCP is actively involved in information gathering from the West through a strategy called the “thousand grains of sand,” which involves collecting information through multiple channels, including from think tanks, scientists, and scholars.
He thus accused the CCP of funding professionals with the sole aim of “cultivating new contacts” through online networking sites. He accused Chinese spies of tricking academics, engineers, and people with close access to cutting-edge technology into working for institutions owned by the CCP, wherein individuals are paid for information about projects they are working on.
McCallum added that the Chinese Ministry of State Security is in complete charge of overseeing cyber attacks against Western governments and commercial targets.
He warned that these efforts are so sophisticated that their success would “bend our economy, our society, our attitudes to suit the CCP’s interests” and “set standards and norms that would enable it to dominate the international order.”
“The widespread Western assumption that growing prosperity within China and increasing connectivity with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has, I’m afraid, been shown to be plain wrong,” he stressed, adding, “But the Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not to emulate them, sadly, but to use them for its gain.”
In their first joint appearance, the heads of the FBI and MI5 appeared together in London to warn of security concerns posed by China and said the government in Beijing was the biggest long-term threat to the U.S. and its allies https://t.co/4bU2Lc6biP pic.twitter.com/sov3coHlNd
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 7, 2022
McCallum also noted that MI5 has “more than doubled” its efforts against Chinese espionage. “Today we’re running seven times as many investigations as we were in 2018. We plan to grow as much again, while also maintaining significant effort against Russian and Iranian covert threats,” he said.
“And it’s not just about scale, it’s about reach. Working hand-in-glove with international partners, sharing data in new ways and mounting joint operations make us much more than the sum of our parts,” the MI5 chief remarked.
FBI Director Wray also echoed a lot of McCallum’s warnings. “The Chinese government that poses the biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security,” Wray said. Speaking to business leaders, he said, “The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market. And they’re set on using every tool at their disposal to do it.”
“We’ve even caught people affiliated with Chinese companies out in the U.S. heartland, sneaking into fields to dig up proprietary, genetically modified seeds, which would have cost them nearly a decade and billions in research to develop themselves,” said the FBI director.
Calling the CCP’s strategy “insidious,” Wray said that they “throw every tool in their arsenal” to steal cutting-edge technologies from the West. In addition, he said that Beijing’s crackdown on critics does not only occur at the domestic level, noting that the CCP uses “transnational repression” to intimidate and even attack dissidents. “Repression is part of how the Chinese government tries to shape the world in its favour, making the world more pliable and susceptible to its nefarious campaign to steal our data and innovation,” he said.
Moreover, he added that China’s threat to invade Taiwan is also a warning against global businesses. “Were that to happen, it would represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen.” He added, “I’m confident in saying that China is drawing all sorts of lessons from what’s happening with Russia and its invasion of Ukraine.”
The heads of FBI and MI5 warn of the growing long-term threat posed by China to UK and U.S. interests https://t.co/ZuIcSW3xKw pic.twitter.com/yjCxibEiaq
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 7, 2022
In this respect, Wray warned, “And if China does invade Taiwan, we could see the same thing again, at a much larger scale.” However, he noted that the CCP’s biggest vulnerability is the fact that it has not been able to learn that “by targeting countries around the world that value the rule of law, they band us even closer together.”
According to reports, the Chinese government has been stepping up efforts to infiltrate US government institutions and private companies. A 2020 report by CSIS notes that from 2000 to 2020, there were at least 160 reported cases of Chinese espionage against the US and over 1,000 cases of intellectual property theft committed by Chinese entities against US companies.
The report notes that 85% of cases involved Chinese agents trying to acquire US military and commercial technologies. For instance, in November last year, the DOJ convicted a Chinese spy for attempting to steal trade secrets from American aviation and aerospace companies.
Additionally, CSIS reported that while 32% of the people involved in spying for China were private Chinese citizens, 26% were non-Chinese actors, “usually US citizens recruited by Chinese officials.” For instance, in December 2021, the US convicted Harvard professor Charles Lieber for lying to the FBI regarding his work with the Chinese government and failing to disclose the salary paid to him by the Wuhan University of Technology.
For the first time, Heads of the FBI and MI5 shared a public platform today. 🇬🇧🇺🇸
— British Embassy Washington (@UKinUSA) July 6, 2022
MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and @FBI Director Chris Wray came together to send a clear signal on a massive shared challenge: China.
See more: https://t.co/FrsFsLvZ2X pic.twitter.com/tGX7OFlQzU
In March, the US charged five people for working on behalf of China’s secret police and stalking, spying on, and harassing Chinese dissidents. The Justice Department accused the five men of perpetrating “transnational repression schemes to target US residents whose political views and actions are disfavoured” by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).
Almost two months later, the US Justice Department charged another four Chinese officials and an American for intimidating Chinese dissidents, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hong Kongers.
A recent report by the US also claimed that China is involved in “agricultural espionage.” It notes that China has been investing heavily in US agricultural land and Chinese scientists have in certain cases chosen to simply steal U.S. agriculture IP and technology.
The Chinese government has denied all accusations of espionage against the US and the UK.