It’s not so much the spying as the everyday subversion that should concern us. Emily Hohler reports
The revelation that 28-year-old Chris Cash, a parliamentary researcher, was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing in March, has “focused a spotlight” on the British government’s approach to China in the interim, says Lucy Fisher in the Financial Times. Moves to “defrost five years of glacial relations” between London and Beijing, including a “flurry of high-level, face-to-face” meetings between senior officials (foreign secretary James Cleverly, among them), had angered hawkish Tory MPs who believe Britain should be taking a much harder line with China. Insiders say that Rishi Sunak and Cleverly were told of the Metropolitan Police’s actions around the time of the arrest.
Cash, a history graduate who spent two years teaching in China and who was arrested alongside another unnamed man in his 30s, was closely linked with security minister Tom Tugendhat, a prominent member of the China Research Group of Tory MPs, and was employed as a researcher by Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the Commons foreign affairs committee. Cash maintains, via his lawyers, that he is “completely innocent”. After The Sunday Times broke the story, Sunak, who is attending the G20 summit in New Delhi, is reported to have told China’s premier Li Qiang that such interference is “completely unacceptable”.
“All states try to influence world affairs in their interests” but China’s activities “cross the boundary from influence to interference”, says The Times. It is essential to find out whether “key politicians’ positions on security and foreign-policy issues may have been affected by espionage” and to allow MPs to establish whether they may have been “targeted”. Tom Tugendhat was sanctioned by Beijing in 2021 alongside Iain Duncan-Smith, a leading China hawk, and three other MPs. “Nor is China’s focus limited to Westminster.” A recent report by the intelligence and security committee warned that China is increasingly using a “whole of state” approach involving businesses and citizens as well as officials to “erode protection and support for fair competition, national sovereignty and
