UK and China’s spying allegations timeline: From ‘honeytraps’ to cyberattacks
Key incidents involving alleged Chinese espionage and political influence have gone to the top of the British establishment (Picture: Getty/AP/ Reuters)
A timeline shows how the British government’s spy agencies made years of warnings about Chinese espionage up to the collapse of the case against two men who allegedly passed information to Beijing.
The milestones take in the so-called ‘golden era’ pursued by David Cameron, who cosied up to his counterpart Xi Jinping, through to the stark warnings about cyber-attacks issued by the UK security agencies.
Whitehall advisers have been blamed for the collapse of the case against Christopher Berry and ex-parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash for providing ‘information prejudicial to the interests of the state’.
The accused had denied the espionage charges, relating to a period between 2021 and 2023, before the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced last month that they had been dropped.
In the fallout, the CPS and the government have given conflicting pictures of how the case derailed, which revolves around changes in the law and the meaning of an ‘enemy’ under the Official Secrets Act 1911.
China’s UK embassy has called the allegations ‘entirely fabricated and malicious slander, which we firmly reject.’
The events shown represent the thin end of the work that MI6, MI5, GCHQ and other agencies do behind the scenes.
And there is no doubt that further incidents involving Chinese intelligence gathering will occupy British political life — and the nation’s security services — for many years to come.
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