A farm machinery operator drives a tractor to turn wheat over in the sun at a farm in Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu Province on June 3, 2026. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, as of June 2, China had completed 35.09 percent of the nationwide harvest. Photo: VCG

The UK group Coalition on Secure Technology (CST)'s claim that "China could use tractors and other internet-linked agricultural machinery to spy on British farmers" is baseless, reflecting lack of confidence on certain British politicians as they tend to suspect anything that they do not understand or anything whose technology has outpaced their own, Chinese experts said on Sunday.

Experts said that the malicious speculations of those anti-China forces in the UK may poison the atmosphere of China-UK economic and trade cooperation and ultimately harm the interests of British farmers themselves.

The remarks came after British media outlet The Telegraph reported on Friday that the CST, led by Graeme Downie, a Labour MP in the UK, claimed that Chinese chips were now commonplace in farm machinery, including GPS-guided tractors, agricultural drones and automated irrigation systems.

"By hacking into agricultural equipment, groups linked to China could spy on the output of British farms and gain intelligence about UK food security," the report claimed.

Jian Junbo, director of the Center for China-Europe Relations at Fudan University's Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Sunday that the CST's groundless accusation of "spy" with even tractors reflects a lack of confidence on the part of certain British politicians.

"Anything they do not understand - or anything whose technology has outpaced their own - is automatically met with suspicion and construed in the worst possible light," Jian said.

Most modern internet-enabled devices use cellular internet-of-things modules (CIMs), around 70 percent of which are manufactured in China, according to The Telegraph.

"The CST's accusation is entirely unfounded and illogical. Its report cites not a single case, not one identified device and not one piece of data - its central claims rest entirely on the conditional 'could' and 'if,'" Zhang Jian, a vice president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"With technological advancements and scale-production advantage, many made-in-China products such as CIMs are popular around the world. It's unreasonable for the CST to sensationalize the 'spy threat' of Chinese chips without any evidence," Zhang said, stressing that this is smearing and slandering on Chinese products.

The CST report calls on ministers in the UK to treat connected agricultural technology as an "emerging national resilience threat" and develop a strategy for "reducing dependence on high-risk, foreign-controlled communications components," according to The Telegraph.

The report's recommendation to "reduce dependence" points to a motive that goes beyond security: clearing the field for their own domestic and allied suppliers. However, the stigmatization of cost-effective and reliable equipment will ultimately leave British farmers and taxpayers to bear the cost, weakening the competitiveness of British agriculture itself, Zhang said.

"Such suspicion, built entirely on conjecture, does not survive a single test of common sense. Britain's genuinely rational media and serious political figures will give this narrative no credence, still less treat it as a basis for decision-making - for they know that hyping a tractor into an instrument of espionage damages not only China-UK mutual trust, but Britain's own judgment and credibility as a mature rule-of-law country and an open economy," Jian said.

This is not the first time that some British organizations have hyped up the "Chinese espionage threat." In June, the UK Security Service, together with intelligence agencies from other "Five Eyes" countries, issued a so-called warning alleging that Chinese intelligence services are approaching individuals in Western countries through fake online recruitment schemes in order to steal military, political, and technological intelligence.

The Chinese Embassy in the UK strongly condemned this accusation, stressing that the allegation of "Chinese espionage threat" is entirely fabricated and constitutes malicious slander.

"It must be pointed out that the 'Five Eyes' are the world's largest intelligence network. Its members have engaged in unscrupulous espionage and intelligence-gathering activities around the globe. Their activities are the real threat to peace-loving countries," a spokesperson with the Chinese embassy said.

"We urge the UK side to immediately stop this clumsy self-staged show of thief crying catch thief. Otherwise, it will only bring shame upon itself," the spokesperson said.