MI5 report on Chinese spying 'unsubstantiated'
- Source: Global Times
- [01:23 February 01 2010]
- Comments
By Liu Dong
A Chinese military expert Sunday refuted claims by the UK's national security intelligence agency that China has engaged in commercial espionage, calling the claims unsubstantiated.
The UK security service, known as MI5, has lodged complaints against China for allegedly "bugging and burgling UK business executives," plus plotting temptation snares to obtain confidential business information, according to The Times newspaper in London.
A leaked 14-page report, compiled by MI5's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, claimed that UK businessmen at trade fairs and exhibitions are easy targets of Chinese intelligence agents.
The traders have allegedly been entrapped by "hospitable" Chinese secret agents presenting gifts of "cameras and memory sticks" harboring electronic Trojan bugs that purportedly render computers vulnerable to intrusion and information theft.
"The MI5's report is purely unfounded fabrication," Dai Xu, a military strategist, told the Global Times.
"The West has repeatedly pegged China as a country equipped with sophisticated spying technology, but the public is not adequately informed of the fact that China is a victim of secret thefts conducted by the technically superior Western countries," The imbalanced information presents an opportunity grabbed by Western powers to discredit China, Dai said.
MI5, additionally citing cyber hacking, consequently asserted that the Chinese government "represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK," for orchestrating a number of attacks on a wide-range of UK organs and business institutions.
Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, who has repeatedly spoken of the Chinese "threat," helped seal an official decision to establish an Office of Cyber Security, which is expected to launch in March.
"China does not commit itself to wrestling the West in terms of a spy war," Dai said.
The report was also met with mixed responses in the UK.
A post by "Terence Hardcastle" on the Times' website said, "When will the West wake up to the threat China poses? They steal all our technology."
A counterpoint was made by "Sean Reeves," who said, "I don't think the Chinese Government is orchestrating the thefts. Similarly, these gifts are not necessarily sinister."
Others alluded to Western intelligence agencies utilizing similar tactics.
In recent years, China's espionage activities, hyped in the West, have aroused vigilance in some countries.
In 2007, prior to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to China, the cover story in the country's popular Der Spiegel weekly magazine claimed that computers in Germany's key governmental organs had been repeatedly targeted by hackings engineered by Chinese military units.
And last year, Canada's University of Toronto issued a report that said Chinese Internet spies had invaded 1,295 computers in 103 countries in the space of two years.
