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China’s intelligence agency has accused British spy agency MI6 of recruiting a Chinese couple who were employed by a “central state agency”, in a move that is set to espionage espionage tensions with Britain.
China’s Ministry of State Security announced that a man surnamed Wang and his wife surnamed Zhou had been recruited by MI6 to gather intelligence for the UK.
Wang was targeted by MI6 soon after arriving in the UK in 2015 as part of the “Sino-British Exchange Programme”, the MSS said in a statement on its social media WeChat account on Monday.
“MI6 provided Wang with professional espionage training and instructed him to return to the United States and gather critical intelligence about China,” the State Department wrote.
The Financial Times was unable to independently verify the allegations, and the British government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The accusations come after a wave of allegations of Chinese espionage in Britain and Europe, with British and European authorities warning that operatives affiliated with Beijing’s intelligence services are infiltrating Western political systems.
In April, two people in the UK, including a former parliamentary aide, were charged with spying for China.
Last month, the Metropolitan police said three men had been charged in a separate case in Britain with agreeing to collect intelligence and conduct surveillance to effectively assist a Hong Kong-based foreign intelligence service.
One of the three, former Royal Marine Matthew Trickett, was later found dead in the park under unknown circumstances.
German authorities arrested a couple in April on suspicion of trying to sell sensitive military technology to China and of having contact with Chinese authorities, and a staff member of a far-right member of the European Parliament was also arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
Last year, the Financial Times revealed that a far-right Belgian politician had worked as an agent for Chinese intelligence for many years.
The tensions over espionage threaten to cloud Britain’s relations with China at a time when the British government is eager to promote international business ties to help Britain’s struggling economy, and the MSS has increasingly publicized its role in China’s security apparatus at home and abroad.
In the latest case, the Ministry of Defence accused MI6 of carefully cultivating Wang and Zhou as assets.
British intelligence agencies say they recognised Wang’s potential value as a source and fast-tracked his application for a study abroad exchange programme to the UK in 2015. They then gave him “special treatment” on tours and meals, exploiting his “strong appetite for money”.
After being hired as a “consultant,” Wang was asked to provide “core” information by a central government agency, the MSS said, before MI6 finally revealed its true identity and openly recruited Wang as a spy, offering him more money, training and asking him to return to China, the MSS said.
Mr Wang’s wife, Zhou, also worked in a “key unit” and MI6 used a combination of “persuasion” and “coercion” to get her to begin collecting intelligence for the UK, the Chinese spy agency said.
The MSS said it had taken decisive action “after thorough investigations and the gathering of solid evidence” and “uprooted and removed the crucial ‘nail’ that the UK had driven into its interior”.
The allegations come after China’s State Security Bureau previously claimed to have uncovered British spies, including a third national surnamed Huang who claimed in January to have been working in China as a representative of a foreign consultancy firm.
