PNN – In a report, the Financial Times newspaper considered the arrests in Germany and England on suspicion of spying for China as an example of the increasing influence of Beijing’s intelligence agencies in Europe and warned against its cooperation with Russia.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, this English newspaper claimed in an article: The arrest of people related to the Beijing government in Germany and England indicates the increase in the scale and ambition of China’s espionage operations.
According to this newspaper, Brest, as an industrial port city in France, which is the location of the country’s navy and its nuclear deterrent submarine, has seen a significant growth in marriages between Chinese women and French sailors living in this naval base in recent years.
The Financial Times posed the question, “How should such relationships be evaluated?” He expressed the concerns of a member of the French parliament in a closed hearing and raised his question about the commander of the nuclear submarine forces of this country.
Recently, three German citizens have been arrested on suspicion of trying to sell sensitive military technology to China, and the German police have also arrested a German employee belonging to the far-right party of the European Parliament on charges of spying for China. At the same time, British prosecutors have accused two men of spying for Beijing, one of whom was a parliamentary inspector.
In another part of this newspaper, the Chinese intelligence agencies have been less active in Europe and have mostly focused on the United States. But with the Europeans’ view of China getting tougher, Beijing’s influence in the continent was expected to increase.
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But last week, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected Berlin’s latest espionage accusations against it after German Chancellor Olaf Schultz returned from a three-day trip to China, calling them sensational claims.
In this regard, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while completely rejecting these claims, announced: The goal is clear; discrediting and suppressing China and weakening its cooperation environment with the European Union.
It is worth noting that at the same time as the tensions between the US and China are rising, Washington has repeatedly asked Europe to review its relations with China on various pretexts.
The Financial Times continues to write: Western intelligence agencies and security analysts have now considered China’s espionage activities to be real and have expressed concern over the existence of signs of China’s connection with Russian networks that have infiltrated Europe.
Dan Lomas, assistant professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham, claims: China and Russia use an authoritarian method; By questioning democracy, both countries increase influence among groups that see political divisions.
In another part of this article, the author compares the intelligence agencies of China and Europe and reports: The scale of China’s espionage operations in Europe is potentially wide such that in 2019, the European Union’s foreign service reported that in Brussels There are about 250 Chinese spies compared to 200 Russian agents.
The Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament also warned late last year that the scale of China’s state intelligence apparatus with hundreds of thousands of intelligence officers is the largest in the world and described it as a challenge for British institutions. This committee further noted that the two British intelligence agencies, MI6 and MI5, have a total of 9,000 personnel.
One of the western officials also said in the same context: The shock of Russia’s attack on Ukraine was such that it caused the cooperation of allied countries that rarely cooperated with each other.
Adam Ney, the publisher of the China Neican newsletter (which monitors and informs about China’s affairs) claims that European far-right groups can provide a favorable ground for Beijing’s influence. In this context, he added: Although many European groups do not work for foreign spies, some may willingly cooperate with Moscow and Beijing.
The Australian researcher then continued: They [right-wing European groups] are seeking to imitate some aspects of the Russian and Chinese model.