Unsuspecting British students and researchers are targeted by Chinese spies and can end up “batting for the other side” without knowing, an intelligence and security expert warned.
Anthony Glees, emeritus professor at the University of Buckingham, said agents of the communist regime have their eyes peeled for promising students who will likely “end up in a decision-making capacity, and in a position where they will have secret intelligence to pass on to China.”
The warning came as Chinese leader Xi Jinping told diplomats on Friday that they need to sway public opinion overseas in favour of the Chinese regime with more palatable language and methods while building an “iron army” that’s loyal to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and doesn’t shy away from struggles.
Describing what he calls “traditional communist spycraft,” Mr. Glees told The Sun that spies would “befriend the lonely students” who are hardworking, lure them to China, and groom them to become assets.
According to the report, published on Saturday, the expert said London’s top universities are prime hunting grounds for Chinese spies, and so are Confucius Institutes, which attract a pool of students who are interested in Chinese culture.
While the biggest targets generally include students and researchers in sensitive areas such as telecommunications and weapons development, other “naive Brits” who don’t believe their knowledge is particularly useful can also fall prey to Chinese spies who work towards building a “rich intelligence picture of the United Kingdom,” he warned.
“One of the specific things that they want is to find out everything about those who might be China’s enemies or enemies in the near future, and that includes the United Kingdom and things that might strike us as being completely irrelevant to China,” he said.
Mr. Glees warns that targets would be wooed with gifts, women, or cultural trips to China, as well as flattery and cash.
“They tell them they’re doing amazing research of the greatest interest, and that is an enormously powerful incentive,” Mr. Glees said, adding that more recently, the regime has been luring researchers to China with cash incentives.
“What happens is that your success as a researcher begins to depend on Chinese money and cooperation with China,” he said. “So, they are quite sophisticated.
Once targets land in China, they would be met with expensive drinks and beautiful women while other agents work on extracting useful information.
“And Brits will provide information, which to them seems completely useless or obvious, but fits into the Chinese jigsaw, which they need,” Mr. Glees described.
Outlining the elaborate process, Mr. Glees warned against complacency as the communist-ruled country “is an adversary of ours and a potential enemy of ours.
“Their opportunity is our danger, and we need to understand that and act accordingly,” he said.
“You don’t have to be guilty of exaggeration to see how there could be a direct link between a relationship with a British student working on, engineering maybe, in her or his twenties who ten years later lands up with a job giving [the Chinese] access to nuclear secrets,” he said.
“These rings of spies, they can exert huge influence because people don’t know that they’re batting for the other side,” he added.
The researcher was reportedly hired by a high-profile MP who’s sanctioned by the CCP and had helped to shape the UK’s China policy. He has denied allegations against him via his lawyers.
The UK, as well as other Western countries, have grown more alert to threats posed by the CCP since COVID-19 spread globally following a CCP cover-up and as the regime tightened its grip on Hong Kong.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared last year the so-called “golden era” of the Sino–British relationship is over, but a report published earlier this year criticised the government for acting too late to tackle the risks posed by the CCP.
Speaking to Chinese diplomats on Friday, Mr. Xi told Chinese diplomats at a conference in Beijing that they had been under pressure since the COVID-19 pandemic as “external forces” escalated their “suppression and containment” effort.
The CCP leader told the diplomats that they need to “make friends,” win the hearts and minds of the populace as well as those of politicians, and use the tool of “the United Front” to gain international support.
The speech has also been seen as a step up of Beijing’s “wolf warrior diplomacy” as the party leader stressed political “discipline” and told the conference to “forge a diplomatic iron army.”
