Chinese Whispers: What we know about Beijing's spies
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Parliamentarians and the British public have been starkly reminded of this by last week’s news that a parliamentary researcher had been arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
This episode won’t be commenting on the ins and outs of that case, but talking more generally about Chinese espionage. What forms does it take, what are its goals and how successful are the Chinese secret services at achieving those?
Cindy Yu is joined by Nigel Inkster, the former director of operations and intelligence for MI6. He has served in Beijing and Hong Kong, and is now the senior adviser on cyber security and China at the think tank IISS.
Produced by Cindy Yu.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:31.5 | Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to |
| 0:36.4 | journalists, experts and long-time China |
| 0:38.3 | watches about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering |
| 0:43.5 | of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the |
| 0:47.9 | Chinese see these issues? Two years ago, Richard Moore, head of MI6, said that China was now the organisation's single greatest priority. |
| 0:58.0 | Parliamentarians and the British public have been starkly reminded of this by last week's news that a parliamentary researcher had been arrested on suspicion of spying for China. |
| 1:07.0 | On this episode, we won't be commenting on the ins and outs of that particular case, but talking more generally about Chinese espionage. |
| 1:13.6 | What forms does it take? What are its goals and how successful are the Chinese secret services at achieving those? |
| 1:19.5 | I'm joined by a brilliant and knowledgeable guest. Nigel Inkster is the former director of operations and intelligence for MI6. |
| 1:26.3 | He has served in Beijing and Hong Kong and is now the |
| 1:29.3 | senior advisor on cybersecurity and China at the think tank IISS. Nigel, welcome to Chinese |
| 1:35.1 | Whispers. Now to start with, can we talk about that Richard Moore assessment about China being |
| 1:40.0 | MI6's single greatest priority? Would you agree with that? And what do you think has led to that |
| 1:45.3 | assessment? Yeah, well, I think what Reggie Moore says is correct, that China probably does |
| 1:51.0 | represent the most significant challenge to the UK currently. And the reason for that is quite |
| 1:58.1 | complex, in fact. A lot of what is causing concern to the UK government at the moment in relation to China |
| 2:06.8 | is not necessarily activities undertaken by the Chinese intelligence services or just by the |
| 2:12.6 | intelligence services. |
| 2:14.0 | There's plenty of that going on and it's obviously very unwelcome. |
| 2:22.6 | And one of the big issues with China, or two issues with China, one is their intelligence services can operate on a scale that makes it very, very difficult to produce the resources, |
| 2:29.5 | to monitor all their activities. |
... |
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