Els Van Hoof, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Belgian Federal Parliament, told the media on April 25 that Chinese communist spies had hacked into her laptop as early as 2021.
This is the latest incident of the Chinese regime’s espionage activities in Europe.
Ms. Van Hoof, a member of the Flemish Christian Democrats, told Belgian public broadcaster VRT on April 25 that she had discovered the cyberattack through an FBI report last month, three years after it occurred.
The FBI report—which noted that Chinese cyber spies had hacked Ms. Van Hoof’s laptop through an email—was part of a lawsuit against seven Chinese nationals who were accused of spying on U.S. citizens and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).
IPAC is an international association of parliamentarians focusing on human rights issues in China, which makes it a top target of the Chinese regime.
Ms. Van Hoof said 400 members of the IPAC—including Samuel Cogolati, vice-chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee—who all opened the email in 2021 were hacked. The impact of the cyberattack is still unclear. Belgian security agencies have been tracking the whereabouts of the affected laptops since 2021, according to the FBI report.
As to the purpose of the Chinese regime’s cyberattack, Ms. Van Hoof told VRT that “the intention, of course, is to intimidate and silence us.”
Chung Chih-tung, an assistant research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times on April 27: “In fact, [the cyberattack is] not just targeting Belgian politicians. The collection of intelligence on some [Western] politicians will be used to intimidate and threaten them to achieve [the Chinese Communist Party’s] political goals. That shows the Chinese communist regime’s aggressiveness stemmed from its struggle ideology.”
Mr. Chung said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been spying on the West for some time, “but before, Western countries were not as vigilant as they are now.”
CCP’s Increasing Espionage on Other Countries
Earlier this year, the Dutch government also accused the CCP of cyberespionage. The Dutch prime minister brought up the issue in his meeting with CCP leader Xi Jinping during his visit to Beijing in late March.The Netherlands Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), which operates under the Ministry of Defense, stated in February that Chinese regime-backed cyber spies hacked networks used by the Dutch Ministry of Defense.
Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said at the time: “For the first time, the MIVD has chosen to make public a technical report on the working methods of Chinese hackers. It is important to attribute such espionage activities by China. In this way, we increase international resilience against this type of cyberespionage.”
MIVD and AIVD [the country’s general intelligence and security service] emphasized in a report that the incident “does not stand on its own, but is part of a wider trend of Chinese political espionage against the Netherlands and its allies.”
Beijing has denied all such accusations.
member of Parliament Stewart McDonald during a press conference at the Centre for Social Justice in central London, after a statement to Parliament that Beijing is behind a wave of state-backed interference, on March 25, 2024. (Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire)
Su Tzu-yun, researcher and director of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times on April 27 that Taiwan is also the target of the CCP’s cyberattacks: “It has also been found out in Taiwan that there are WiFi receivers inside stage lights. It’s becoming more and more obvious that the CCP are using various methods to conduct espionage through electronic devices. Now, Western countries begin to expand their prevention efforts [against the CCP’s cyberespionage].”
Mr. Chung said technological development has significantly changed the way that intelligence is collected.
“The internet security has actually become a very important issue for Western countries,” he said. “[Therefore,] the U.S.–China trade war and the technology war are actually a different kind of intelligence war.”
Mr. Chung warned that as the West is awakening to the CCP’s threats, the Chinese regime has gradually diversified its means of spying, such as through the internet, electronic device exports, education, cultural exchange, and research.
“The CCP espionage activities are comprehensive,” he said. “In fact, every department of the CCP has the task of collecting intelligence on other countries through different ways, depending on the types of their work.”
Last week, an aide to Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Alternative for Germany, was arrested in Germany. The man, who’s from China but holds German citizenship, was charged with espionage for China.
