© Reuters/Hannah McKayChinese Embassy
Britain quietly expelled three Chinese spies last year who it said were posing as journalists, it has emerged, as tensions flare between the two countries over a range of media issues. The intelligence agency MI5 concluded
the three worked for China's powerful Ministry of State Security (MSS) but had been using the cover of working for the country's press agencies.
Whitehall sources confirmed that three people had been asked to leave, following a report in the
Daily Telegraph, although few other details were initially available. British nervousness about relations with Beijing means that where the UK believes that China has been engaged in spying it prefers to act quietly, so as not to cause a diplomatic incident. However, as a result, despite broad warnings from British intelligence that the threat from Chinese espionage is poorly understood,
it is impossible to establish the true scale and nature of the threat posed.Using journalistic identities as cover is long established in espionage, and is a method that has been favoured by Beijing in pursuit of both political and economic intelligence around the world. Last year Belgian intelligence working with its UK counterparts opened an investigation into allegations that Fraser Cameron, a British businessman, formerly of MI6, sold information about the EU to two spies posing as journalists in Brussels.
Cameron denies the allegations.
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