- author, Kelly Ng
- role, BBC News
China has accused Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, of recruiting Chinese civil servants as spies.
China’s Ministry of State Security said in a post on its official WeChat channel that MI6 operatives had turned a Chinese man, identified only as Wang, and his wife, also surnamed Zhou, against Beijing.
Both men worked in “core secret” departments at Chinese government agencies.
The ministry alleges that MI6 began lobbying Wang when he studied in the UK on a Sino-British exchange programme in 2015.
The department claims its agents took “special care” with him, including inviting him to dinners and tours of Britain to “better understand his interests and vulnerabilities”.
The BBC has reached out to UK authorities for a response.
This comes just over a month after the UK accused the two men of spying for China, with British police accusing them of providing “articles, notes, documents or information” to a foreign country, while China has called the accusations “malicious slander”.
Beijing and some Western countries have increasingly traded accusations of espionage.
In Wang’s case, Chinese authorities said MI6 operatives exploited his “strong desire for money”, posing as alumni to befriend him at the university and force him to provide “paid consultancy services”.
China’s Ministry of State Security claimed that after a while, the operatives decided that “conditions were right” and asked him to cooperate with the British government in exchange for higher pay and security.
He added that MI6 operatives had recruited Zhou as a spy for China through Wang.
“The king was hesitant at first, but he couldn’t resist. [the operatives’] “After repeated persuasion, inducement and even coercion, she finally agreed,” the ministry said in a WeChat statement.
“At Wang’s strong urging, Zhou agreed to gather information… and he and his wife became spies for the British.”
He added that the incident remains under investigation.
China’s Ministry of State Security has been posting frequent updates since opening its official channel in August.
The Chinese government also warned its citizens to refrain from photographing military equipment and warned against organisations “recruiting aviation enthusiasts as volunteers” to transmit Chinese flight data to other countries.
