The entrance to the British prime minister's official residence, 10 Downing Street, in London Photo: VCG

China firmly opposes peddling "China spy" narratives and vilifying China, said Lin Jian, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, during a regular press conference on Thursday, responding to remarks by the UK's National Security Adviser Matt Collins in recently released "witness statements", which alleged that "Chinese intelligence services are conducting extensive espionage operations against the UK" and labeled China as "the greatest state-based threat to the UK's economic security." These comments followed the dropping of a case against two individuals accused of providing national security secrets to China from the UK. 

The Chinese Embassy in the UK also said on Thursday that from the very beginning, it has emphasized that the allegation that China instructed certain British individuals to "steal UK intelligence" is completely fabricated and maliciously slanderous. The Chinese Embassy firmly opposes such allegation.

The so-called witness statements released by the UK after the withdrawal of the case are filled with baseless accusations against China, along with pure speculation and fabrication. The Chinese Embassy strongly condemns this, a spokesperson said. China never interferes in the internal affairs of other countries and always acts in an open and aboveboard manner, the spokesperson said, noting that attempts by certain British politicians to smear and vilify China will never succeed.

This round of media hype of so-called Chinese hackers and smears against China came amid escalating tensions between the UK government and opposition parties. 

On Wednesday night local time, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer released three witness statements written by Collins, in an effort to draw a line under a row over the dropped case against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who were accused of being "Chinese spies", the Guardian reported.

According to the Guardian, Starmer's decision to publish the "evidence" on Wednesday was made "under pressure from the Conservatives". 

Earlier in September, charges were dropped against Christopher Cash, a former parliamentary researcher to Kearns and Tom Tugendhat, and Christopher Berry, a teacher, after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the government had not provided evidence that China represented a "threat to the national security of the UK". Cash and Berry have denied any wrongdoing, the Guardian reported.

The director of public prosecutions said the case collapsed because evidence could not be obtained from the government referring to China as a national security threat, according to the BBC.

Chinese analysts noted that the UK government's narrative over the so-called "China spy case" and the release of the three "witness statements" is driven more by domestic political infighting than a sober security assessment.

Li Guanjie, research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday that the Conservative Party is seeking to exploit an already shelved case as a way to influence Britain's China policy - a politically opportunistic maneuver disconnected from actual facts. 

Zhao Chen, a research fellow at the Institute of European Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Thursday that both the "China spy case" and alleged threats to UK national security should be judged on principle and facts, not used for political maneuvering. Zhao added that overstating bilateral interactions or maliciously manufacturing a narrative of Chinese threat goes beyond securitization in the UK - it aims to affix a toxic filter over China.