MI5’s warning to Westminster: China’s espionage playbook goes from the shadows to the digital sphere

The Chinese have transformed spy tradecraft from old-school methods such as dead drops to now recruiting and influencing online under the guise of business recruitment, through use of digital platforms such as LinkedIn and recruitment firms.

"Covert and calculated attempt"

The warning, circulated by the House of Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle and House of Lords Speaker, Lord McFall, explicitly named two individuals, Amanda Qiu of BR-YR Executive Search and Shirly Shen of Internship Union, as agents of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). Their mission on behalf of Chinese Intelligence being to establish and cultivate long-term relationships with targets inside the whole of the Westminster political establishment.

The UK Security Minister, Dan Jarvis described this as a „covert and calculated attempt” to interfere with UK sovereignty and its democratic order. In response to this threat, he announced the implementation of a long overdue Counter Political Interference and Espionage Action Plan which will include the following actions:

• Giving enhanced security briefings to all MPs, Members of the House of Lords and election candidates.
• Collaboration with tech platforms to disrupt and expose all hostile outreach;
• Legislative reforms to tighten foreign influence reporting and political donation rules;
• Investment in sovereign encryption technologies to secure government communications.

Nonetheless, the challenge is immense given the scale and reach of hostile actions that have occurred up until this moment. It is in no way an exaggeration to describe China’s approach as patient, persistent and digitally aware.

This stands in clear contrast to Russia’s blunt and disruptive tactics. For Moscow it is about being loud, brash and feigning denial to signal what it thinks is strength. In stark and I would say vastly more insidious contrast; Beijing prefers to employ subtle influencing operations that deliberately obscure the lines between legitimate networking and active hostile recruitment. The intention of the Chinese spy agencies is to operate in plain sight and not draw attention to their very aggressive and deeply hostile intentions.

Many questions

For the state of UK democracy, this episode raises several critical questions.  How resilient is the political system against hostile digital infiltration? Are MPs and staff adequately aware and trained to spot hostile approaches? How could tech platforms help in countering state-backed espionage?

In answer to these questions, MI5’s advice is very clear. They recommend several vital precautionary measures: Verification through due diligence of all contacts, reporting all suspicious outreach and treating all unsolicited offers with extreme caution. However, the broader solution lies in reforming the whole system through tightening all security protocols, enhancing and standardizing cyber hygiene and embedding counter-espionage awareness into every aspect of the political culture at Westminster. MI5 stressed clearly that even seemingly innocuous and banal details can be collated by a hostile foreign power into vital strategic intelligence with the capacity to gravely compromise individuals, institutions and even the very state itself.

In response to all these UK concerns, China’s embassy dismissed the allegations as „malicious slander”, but the evidence suggests very clearly otherwise. For the UK this is not just about protecting Parliament, it’s about safeguarding the integrity of the democratic system in an era where such influencing operations are now as effective and powerful as other domains of conventional espionage.

All this activity signals that China considers Western democracy a threat to its power and political existence and has resolved to work against it through on the one hand infiltration and capture of Western institutions and on the other, to over a long period of time, make the West dependent upon it economically and technologically. In this way China will seek in a future or even perhaps imminent conflict/crisis, to effectively choke the economic order upon which the West depends, to apply the central idea taught in the ancient Chinese work The Art of War by Sun Tzu, „to subdue the enemy without fighting”.