Europe ill-prepared to counter China espionage push, analysts say

PARIS (AFP) — China is rapidly emerging as a major spying superpower and its agents are becoming increasingly bold, in a shift that Europe has so far been slow to counter, analysts say.

This week's cases of alleged Chinese espionage in Germany and Britain are the latest reminder of Beijing's immense intelligence network and its ability to penetrate into the heart of European capitals. 

In the run-up to European elections, Germany and the United Kingdom announced Monday that five people had been arrested or charged on suspicion of spying for China. 

And on Tuesday German prosecutors announced that an aide to a far-right member of the European Parliament had been arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

There is no immediate evidence to link those cases, or to explain the timing of the announcements.

But the accusations have come on the heels of multiple Western warnings of Chinese intelligence services seeking to spy on European economies and companies, penetrate educational establishments, and shape public opinion.

China has strongly denied the claims of wrongdoing.

"There is a long tradition of Chinese intelligence geared towards capturing information assets, patents and strategic intellectual resources," Alexandre Papaemmanuel, a Paris-based intelligence expert, told AFP.

For a long time, Europe has turned a blind eye. 

"Awareness was late in coming, partly due to naivety and excessive confidence in a somewhat utopian form of globalization," he said.

Vast espionage network

In September, the Institut Montaigne in Paris noted that the United States was "using economic security instruments with the ambition of staying one step ahead of other countries." 

The EU "does not have this strategic reflex" the think tank added, having "built itself on the principles of free trade and multilateralism".

The Chinese intelligence apparatus poses a serious threat, however.

"It is one of the most important services in the world, if not the most important," said Paul Charon, a China specialist at the French military's Institute for Strategic Research in Paris.

China relies on a vast network of organizations including the ministry of public security and the ministry of state security to carry out espionage activities.

Charon estimated that the intelligence branch of the Chinese ministry of public security employs between 80,000 and 100,000 people.

Some sources say the ministry of state security employs as many as 200,000 agents. "But the reality is that nobody has any figures and we are reduced to speculation," said Charon.

"China almost certainly maintains the largest state intelligence apparatus in the world — dwarfing the U.K.'s intelligence community and presenting a challenge for our agencies to cover," the Intelligence and Security Committee of Britain's parliament said last year.

"While seeking to exert influence is a legitimate course of action, China oversteps the boundary, and crosses the line into interference."

China's activities focus on the survival of the regime, intelligence gathering and information warfare. 

Last year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, listed the army, the ministry of state security and the ministry of public security, as well as the ministries of foreign affairs and industry and various Chinese Communist Party organizations, among top organs involved in operations of influence and interference.

"A wide range of non-state or quasi-state actors are also involved, from hacktivists to private security companies," the think tank said.

‘More operations’

While China's intelligence operations are enormous, "the nature and scale of the Chinese Intelligence Services are — like many aspects of China's government — hard to grasp for the outsider," said the British parliament.

It pointed to "the size of the bureaucracy, the blurring of lines of accountability between party and state officials, a partially decentralized system, and a lack of verifiable information."

Charon said that people often thought of China as a state with a highly efficient bureaucratic apparatus. "That's what the Chinese would have us believe."

In reality officials often improvise, and guidelines "remain vague and above all appear symbolic," he added.

The most recent cases come as no surprise as Western countries seek to assess the scale of Beijing's espionage efforts.

"We're detecting more operations, primarily because the Chinese services are clearly more active, but also because we're taking more interest in them. But we don't know what is the tip of the iceberg," said Charon.

"Do the operations observed represent 10% of their activities or 60%? We don't know, and that's a dramatic illustration of our shortcomings."

The scarcity of Western knowledge about China and multiple crises including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as terrorism, further weaken Europe, which lacks resources in the face of a powerful adversary.

"The wealth of an intelligence service is measured by the data it can collect," said Papaemmanuel, referring to "gigantic Chinese cyber activities to recover large volumes of sensitive data." 

Charon said that European security services have set up effective counter-espionage operations, "but the Chinese services — their organization, capabilities and modus operandi — are still too little known." 

To make up for these shortcomings, "digital investigation represents a real source of potential knowledge that we must exploit more systematically," he said.

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By DIDIER LAURAS Agence France-Presse

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