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- cross-posted to:
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Chinese authorities say they have detained an individual alleged to be spying for Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6.
China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) said the individual was a foreigner and was trying to collect information inside the country.
It is the latest arrest in a campaign by Chinese security to clamp down on foreign spying.
The British government has not commented on the claims.
The news of the arrest came in a statement issued in a post from the MSS on the WeChat social network.
It said the alleged spy was named “Huang” and came from a “third country,” implying they were neither British nor Chinese. It said consular visits had been arranged following the arrest but did not say from which country.
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China arrests who they want for any number of reasons they often can’t (or won’t) support with evidence … so I take this news with a pound of salt.
You’re not wrong, but maybe you’ve noticed that whenever any country announces they’ve arrested a spy, or foreign intelligence asset, the country they’re accused of spying for always, without fail, denounces it as political persecution and denies the allegations of spying.
So…while there’s recent precedent for political detentions of citizens under false pretense of spying, it’s not like it’s that hard to believe they were a spy.
The only real evidence we have that they aren’t a spy is that they weren’t summarily, and quietly, executed.
We’ll just have to wait and see how they proceed. Will they be used for a prisoner swap of detained Chinese intelligence assets? Or held indefinitely.
Because indefinite detention probably means innocent of spying, and waiting to be used for a political bargaining tool.
This link is about the two Michaels so I’m unsure why you’re linking it here.
The comment was about China arbitrarily arresting people for “espionage.” In fact, China has a better track record of finding spies than the Canadian government has of recognizing that their spies were detained.
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The grocery store is usually where I get my salt. Dunno where you have been getting yours…
Dammit James!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) said the individual was a foreigner and was trying to collect information inside the country.
Previous cases have focused on alleged activity by the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - so accusing Britain’s MI6 is more unusual.
Beijing has also launched public campaigns to raise awareness of foreign spying and calling on people to report any activity.
In this latest case, the MSS alleged that in 2015, MI6 recruited the foreign national to create what was described as an “intelligence cooperation relationship”.
In October, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, the UK’s domestic security service, described a “pretty epic” campaign of Chinese espionage.
Speaking to the BBC at an event in the US designed to highlight concerns over China, he said more than 20,000 people in the UK had been approached covertly online by Chinese spies.
The original article contains 579 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
