Britain’s domestic intelligence chief warned this week that Chinese intelligence agents are grooming British citizens as spies as part of influence operations that can stretch over years and even decades.
Ken McCallum, director general of the intelligence service known as MI5, said in his annual update on threats to the UK this week that Chinese intelligence operations pose one of the major threats to national and economic security, including to the British political system.
“We see the Chinese authorities playing the long game in cultivating contacts to manipulate opinion in China’s favor — seeking to co-opt and influence not just prominent parliamentarians from across the political landscape, but people much earlier in their careers in public life, gradually building a debt of obligation,” Mr.