LONDON : Britain's security services are becoming increasingly
worried by a rise in Chinese espionage, a British newspaper
reported.
The Guardian daily said that officials did not know what impact the
espionage was having and how widespread it was.
Britain's MI5 internal security service believes that "at least 20
foreign intelligence services are operating to some degree against
UK interests" with the Chinese and the Russians the most worrying,
the newspaper said.
Security sources told The Guardian that the Chinese were garnering
the tiniest morsels of information in the fields of business,
security and industry and sending them back to China.
Justin King, managing director of C2i, a British counter-espionage
consultancy, said businesses were highly aware of what was going
on.
"The Chinese are desperate to find out everything about how western
companies operate and how they are structured," The Guardian quoted
him as saying.
"It is old-fashioned human intelligence gathering - it's thousands
of years old and it works. Employers should plan for the fact that
there is a strong likelihood information, even if it is low-level
stuff, will be fed back to China."
Quoting a "well-placed" government department source, The Guardian
reported that MI5 were concerned about the size of delegations
China was sending over to investigate incidents.
They cited the delegation sent over to assist after the February
2004 deaths of at least 21 Chinese shellfish pickers at Morecambe
Bay, northwest England, and the one dispatched to help police
identification of 58 Chinese stowaways who died in the back of a
truck entering Britain before last year's trial.
King said that hi-tech and scientific developments were arousing
Chinese interest.
"The Chinese economy is booming but what they are short of is
information technology and modern processing, manufacturing and
design skills," he said.
King added that when Chinese nationals work in Western businesses,
"our clients' experience is that they have mixed loyalties.
"We have come across cases where Chinese nationals are working at
the heart of British companies' IT security departments with access
to entire databases. To my mind, that is a business risk too
far."
The Guardian added that US authorities were also becoming concerned
over the impact of Chinese spies. - AFP/de