- A network of Chinese industrial spies has been
established
across Europe as the Communist government's intelligence agencies shift
their resources and attention from traditional Cold War espionage towards
new forms of subterfuge aimed at achieving global commercial
dominance.
-
- The extent of the spying was laid bare after a leading
Chinese agent "defected" in Belgium. The agent, who has worked
in European universities and companies for more than 10 years, has given
the Sûreté de l'Etat, the Belgian equivalent of MI5, detailed
information on hundreds of Chinese spies working at various levels of
European
industry.
-
- With the number of Chinese entering Europe about to
increase
as Beijing relaxes travel restrictions, Western intelligence agencies fear
that the spying will be even more difficult to combat. Britain is likely
to be one of the countries where significant infiltration is
planned.
-
- "There is a large Chinese intelligence operation
in northern Europe spanning communications, space, defence, chemicals and
heavy industries," said Claude Monique, a Brussels-based intelligence
analyst.
-
- "The Chinese agent has given details of hundreds
of experts and their activities. As a result national inquiries have been
launched, certainly by the German, French, Netherlands and Belgian agencies
and, I believe, in Britain too."
-
- A former British official, who runs a private consultancy
specialising in fraud and risk management in Beijing, said that the
Ministry
of State Security systematically extracted the information it wanted from
Chinese people travelling aboard, including tourists, businessmen and
scientists.
-
- "Any ethnic Chinese with relatives or business
interests
in China is vulnerable," he said. "There are a large number of
people who live at or travel to key locations who are regularly debriefed
or given orders to obtain various types of strategic information that
Beijing
finds is militarily or economically useful.
-
- "Traditionally, the Chinese who went abroad since
the late 1970s for trade or study purposes were in businesses controlled
by the state. That apparatus of spying has grown over time as Chinese
ambitions
have risen."
-
- Visa regulations easing restrictions on Chinese tourism
have recently come into force in the UK, as well as continental Europe,
and attempts to monitor travellers' activities and telephone calls are
at risk of being overwhelmed. A spokesman for the security services said
that Chinese spying already represented a significant intelligence
challenge
that mirrored the threat previously posed by Russian agents.
-
- The defector making the allegations of spying in Belgium
has refused to come forward in public because he has not yet received
political
asylum. He is described by Western intelligence officials as a leading
figure in the Chinese Students and Scholars' Association of Leuven, an
alleged front organisation based in a Belgian university town that
co-ordinated
industrial espionage activities across Europe.
-
- According to an intelligence official, the association
enabled Beijing's Ministry of State Security to maintain contact with a
wide spectrum of Chinese citizens living across the continent: "The
Chinese operate at many levels, from the pure intelligence agents based
at embassies to researchers sent to Europe for training to individual
citizens
who work apparently independently for five or 10 years until they are in
a position to prove their usefulness."
-
- Among the companies targeted by the Chinese network,
according to Belgian officials, is the French communications company
Alcatel.
It is contracted to build the ·1 billion (£676m) Galileo
satellite
communications system that European leaders have promoted as a rival to
the American Global Positioning System, which has a monopoly of satellite
communications systems.
-
- The Western intelligence official said that China had
been brought in as an official partner on the technology, largely because
its successful espionage made it futile to keep Beijing out.
-
- The strongest complaints about Chinese spying have
emerged
in America. David Szady, the chief of FBI counter-intelligence operations,
has said that China is rapidly eroding America's technological superiority:
"I think you see it where something that would normally take 10 years
to develop takes them two or three.
-
- "What they are looking for are the systems or
materials
or the designs or the batteries or the air-conditioning or the things that
make that thing tick," he said. "That's what they are very good
at collecting, going after both the private sector, the industrial
complexes,
as well as the colleges and universities in collecting scientific
developments
that they need."
-
- A recent report to the American House of Representatives
listed 16 "remarkable" Chinese technological breakthroughs that
could have been achieved only by industrial espionage. These included a
supercomputer that runs at speeds previously achieved only by America and
Japan. Sophisticated communications systems, advanced satellite technology
and advances in nano-technology were also identified as suspect in the
report.
-
- Among recent Chinese military advances, which experts
believe increase Beijing's military strength in the sensitive Taiwan
Strait,
is a new cruise missile copy of America's Tomahawk weapon and a sea-borne
defence system based on stolen Aegis system blueprints.
-
- A Chinese adage holds that one good spy is worth 10,000
men. As China strives to displace America and Europe as a global economic
powers, that ancient insight could help propel the country to new economic
heights.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://telegraph.co.uk/
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