The New Great Game - Chinese Communist Espionage and United Front
The Asian Crime Century briefing 37
The arrest of a British parliamentary researcher has brought to public attention the issue that China spies on the UK, but most people have no idea how they do so. The approach of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to spying has always been very different from Western intelligence agencies, and we should not think of their agents as in the mold of James Bond, Harry Palmer or (least of all) Jackson Lamb.
Alleged espionage by the British parliamentary researcher is not the first case, and there have been a flurry of espionage cases around the world in the past several years highlighting how spying by China on the US, the UK and their allies has been intensifying.
The growing extent of Chinese communist espionage is illustrated by the FBI case load, which was over 1,000 ongoing cases in 2020 “into China’s actual and attempted theft of American technology,” according to Director Chris Wray.
The Director General of MI5 has said publicly that China’s leaders are seeking to “bend our economy, our society, our attitudes to suit the Chinese Communist Party’s interests…To set standards and norms that would enable it to dominate the international order.” Much of this activity is conducted through the strategy of ‘united front’, which is a core part of maintenance of CCP influence and power.
United Front - Espionage and Influencing
The CCP undertakes influencing through “united front” work, which Australian scholar Gerry Groot has succinctly described as “Rallying all those who can be rallied; uniting with all those who can be united (and isolating our enemies).” However, united front activities are also an important channel for espionage activities.
The concept of a “United Front” was formulated in the Soviet Union by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern) in December 1921, which called for the “greatest possible unity of all workers’ organisations in every practical action against the united capitalists.” Lenin identified two categories of allies: The first comprised sympathetic forces that could be united, and the second involved exploiting conflicts within the enemy. United front work involves collaborating with people and organizations that can be cultivated as well as sowing division amongst opponents.
In 1939, Mao Tse Tung wrote that the united front, armed struggle, and party building were the CCP’s three magic weapons. United front has always been a key part of the CCP’s intelligence gathering and espionage activities, which have often been hidden behind what seem to be innocuous activities. For instance, the New China News Agency (Xinhua) was for decades a front organization for intelligence operations. Members of the Chinese diaspora as well as friendly Western contacts are cultivated not only as potential allies for the CCP, but also a possible source of intelligence.
Intelligence work by the Chinese government also includes the monitoring and harassment of groups that threaten the single-party narrative of the CCP, such as Taiwanese nationals, exiled Tibetans, Uighurs (from Xinjiang Province), Falun Gong members, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, and other Chinese dissidents.
This attempt to counter political opposition around the world has failed, and if anything Chinese dissident groups are more vocal because of the harassment. The suppression of protests in Hong Kong and the enactment of the National Security Law by the Chinese government in 2020 created a global Hong Kong diaspora and dissident movement. This has joined other Chinese dissident diasporas amongst Falun Gong members, Taiwanese, Tibetans, and Uyghurs in their campaigns against the growing Chinese communist authoritarian rule.
CCP united front activities have increased during the tenure of Xi Jinping, and in 2017 he said that “To improve the work of the United Front in the current era, we must be good at befriending prominent non-CPC [CCP] individuals. This is an important part of such work.”
In the UK, Mi5 issued an alert in 2023 stating that Christine Lee, a UK-based lawyer, had been engaged in "political interference activities" for the Chinese state. Lee had donated around half a million pounds to a Labour Party Member of Parliament and also employed his son in her office. Using her contacts with the MP, Lee developed relationships with more people involved in UK politics and her work seems to have been befriending people to lay the ground for future influencing. Lee’s activities are a perfect example of united front work in action.
Guns for Hire - Economic Espionage
United front work is largely political in its nature, but Chinese government agencies also have a long history of espionage for economic objectives. Chinese government agencies have made use of overseas scientists to bring knowledge to China, which according to the FBI often involves stealing proprietary information or violating export controls and conflict-of-interest rules. This approach was illustrated by the “Thousand Talents Program” which was created by the CCP in 2008 to overcome a massive brain drain as most Chinese scholars studying overseas did not return to China after completing their studies.
However, although the program was not originally conceived as a means of industrial espionage it effectively became so as a part-time option was introduced that allowed scholars and researchers to have simultaneous appointments in China as well as overseas. US officials became concerned that the “Thousand Talents Program” was a conduit for the Chinese government to transfer intellectual property from the US to China.
The Chinese government has also developed the “Foreign Thousand Talents Program,” which involves recruiting international researchers and compensating them well to effectively transfer their knowledge to China. The UK has been a target of this program – In October 2022 it was reported that up to 30 retired British Royal Air Force pilots had gone to China to train members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) air force, with financial compensation amounting to up to £237,911.
In September 2023, it was reported that three former Royal Canadian Air Force pilots had been recruited to train military and civilian pilots in China, including for the PLA air force. This has led to an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which is ongoing. The Canadian pilots had been recruited by the ‘Test Flying Academy of South Africa’, which is based in the Western Cape town of Oudtshoorn.
The Test Flying Academy of South Africa was added to the US Treasury, Department of Commerce, ‘Entity List’ in June 2023 which means that the company is sanctioned. Although the company is based in South Africa, the US Department of Commerce lists another address as No. 1 Lingyun Road, Yanliang District, Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, China.
The Test Flying Academy of South Africa has also admitted a business relationship with a Chinese businessman named ‘Su Bin’ who was convicted in 2016 of charges relating to participating in a years-long conspiracy to hack into the computer networks of major U.S. defence contractors, steal sensitive military and export-controlled data and send the stolen data to China. The US investigation of Su Bin began in 2014 and involved his role in the criminal conspiracy to steal military technical data, including data relating to the C-17 strategic transport aircraft and certain fighter jets produced for the U.S. military. Su Bin reportedly organised training for Chinese PLA pilots at the Test Flying Academy of South Africa between 2009 and 2013.
The use of foreign (i.e. non-Chinese) citizens to obtain their experience and knowledge is an increasing part of the tool kit of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), which is the primary Chinese government department responsible for espionage. In July the Director of Mi5 stated that "The motive behind Chinese intelligence service cultivation of Westerners is primarily to make “friends”: once a “friendship” is formed [they] will use the relationship to obtain information which is not legally or commercially available to China and to promote China’s interest. Cultivation of a contact of interest is likely to develop slowly: [they] are very patient. … The aim of these tactics is to create a debt of obligation on the part of the target, who will eventually find it difficult to refuse inevitable requests for favours in return."
In August it was reported that a suspected MSS officer using an alias ‘Robin Zhang’ had created fake security companies and websites as background for his profiles on LinkedIn that were used to contact experts working in sensitive areas in the military, science, technology, and politics with offers of employment. ‘Zhang’ reportedly offered a recruitment consultant £8,000 for details of a candidate from the intelligence services, presumably as part of work to identify targets for approaches to recruit them. ‘Zhang’ also expanded his targeting to try to recruit contacts in think tanks and universities and has conducted recruitment on an industrial scale.
The reality is that ‘Zhang’ is most likely not a single person but only a name for a large number of desk based intelligence analysts in China to use as part of widespread international targeting of foreign talent. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms give the MSS and other Chinese intelligence agencies the scale and reach to conduct these operations, and they have clearly learned fast how to use social media that is not available to ordinary people in China.
Befriending people is a key part of united front work, and clearly also Chinese espionage. In China it is common to restrict access of foreign business people to senior officials so that when they do gain an audience they are led to believe that this is a privilege granted to few people. Business organisations seek access to China and can become apologists for the CCP by calling for less criticism against China in order to gain access. The offer of access to Chinese officials is a hook used to coerce people into staying silent.
There is without doubt a surge in Chinese espionage activity that must be better understood in the UK. The primary Chinese target is of course the US, but allies such as Australia, Japan, and the UK are secondary targets. Not only is the UK a close ally of these countries, but UK military, government, and civilian contractors work closely with the military and intelligence agencies of those countries. This makes British experts good targets for recruitment by the MSS and other Chinese agencies.
Intelligence agencies in the UK and allied countries need to increase their effectiveness against Chinese espionage and treat collaboration with Chinese intelligence officers as a crime as this will deter those who collude with foreign intelligence agencies even if their professional intelligence officer handlers are not arrested (as is usually the case). Only by doing so will the reality of espionage by clear to those who may be coerced or co-opted (or unfortunately duped) by foreign intelligence agencies. Foreign intelligence officers recruiting people in Britain are invariably not in this country and often working through the Internet to contact targets, so the response must be to criminalise this activity and take the same consistently tough approach that the US authorities take to espionage.
This is a new Great game, which previously referred to the British and Russian rivalry in Central Asia in the 19th century. The new rival is the People’s Republic of China, but the domain is global. The rivalry is for influence, knowledge, and advantage, and the Chinese government is waging the new Great Game on a massive scale.
The Great Game never ceased only evolved and morphed. It goes on but it is so vast and multi faceted no one person can grasp it.