"Chinese intelligence operatives are on a par with the Russians"

"Chinese intelligence operatives are on a par with the Russians"

Western spy chiefs say that sophistication of Beijing’s intelligence operations is now comparable to the Kremlin's.

There is growing fear in Europe that the Chinese spy and counter-intelligence services represent an ever-increasing threat to Europe, even greater than the one coming from Russia.

"Chinese intelligence is no less dangerous. Moreover, their espionage operations are now even better than the Russian ones," confirmed a former senior CIA official for Europe.

China is already well known for advanced cyber attacks, such as the 2021 Microsoft hack, which compromised 30.000 organisations globally and which the US, EU and UK said was carried out by criminal groups working at Beijing’s behest. China denied the allegations, calling them “groundless and irresponsible”.

However, the method of collecting data through direct human action on the ground (HUMINT) is increasingly advanced, which was interpreted in the West as a signal for alarm.

"The Russians have been doing espionage since before the Soviet Union, they love it," says the former head of the British intelligence agency MI6, Alex Younger, pointing out that the Chinese have weaker software capabilities when it comes to artificial intelligence, but are getting dangerously close to Russian know-how.

MI5 chief Ken McCallum says the Chinese Communist Party is investing heavily in the development of espionage. "We are not crying 'wolf!', but this is a serious security threat," he concludes, his warning all the more stark as it came amid Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Europe’s biggest security threat.

Another intelligence officer says that Chinese espionage is not similar to Russian espionage, in the sense that it is very difficult to tell who is and who is not an agent. “Chinese espionage is not even a variant of the Russian approach,” the second intelligence official said. “Just agreeing what constitutes a Chinese agent can be hard.”

For example, Russian spies are mainly focused on high-ranking officials, so they have developed a number of intelligence skills such as cracking coded information to find out specific information. But the Chinese are developing their espionage system with broader aims, ranging from political influencing to obtaining commercial or technological secrets.

“Russian spying tends to be tightly focused, whereas China uses a ‘whole of society’ approach,” it has been concluded.

The Financial Times also points out that Europe has so far expelled more than 600 Russian diplomats and intelligence officers since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. However, a similar situation with Beijing could be significantly more demanding because it will be very difficult to establish the identity of all the numerous informants.

One FBI official even commented that the amount of effort China is putting into these operations is absolutely incredible: “The scale of China’s efforts is breathtaking”.