UK and China’s spying allegations timeline: From ‘honeytraps’ to cyberattacks

A timeline shows how the British government’s spy agencies made years of warnings about Chinese espionage up to the collapse of the case against two men who allegedly passed information to Beijing.  

The milestones take in the so-called ‘golden era’ pursued by David Cameron, who cosied up to his counterpart Xi Jinping, through to the stark warnings about cyber-attacks issued by the UK security agencies.  

The Duke of York is also featured through his dealings with a businessman who was named as an alleged Chinese spy.

Both men have denied any wrongdoing.

Honeytraps and cyberattacks have been identified by the security services as among the tools used by Beijing to gather intelligence.

The latest development is the government’s apparent refusal to support the Chinese spy prosecutions against the accused men.

Whitehall advisers have been blamed for the collapse of the case against Christopher Berry and ex-parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash for providing ‘information prejudicial to the interests of the state’.

The accused had denied the espionage charges, relating to a period between 2021 and 2023, before the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced last month that they had been dropped.  

In the fallout, the CPS and the government have given conflicting pictures of how the case derailed, which revolves around changes in the law and the meaning of an ‘enemy’ under the Official Secrets Act 1911. 

China’s UK embassy has called the allegations ‘entirely fabricated and malicious slander, which we firmly reject.’

The events shown represent the thin end of the work that MI6, MI5, GCHQ and other agencies do behind the scenes.   

And there is no doubt that further incidents involving Chinese intelligence gathering will occupy British political life — and the nation’s security services — for many years to come. 

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