Beijing’s Invisible Hand

The failed prosecution of Englishmen Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry underscores how Chinese espionage exploits the gaps in Western legal and investigative frameworks to operate effectively in plain sight.

Christopher Berry (L) and Christopher Cash have been accused of passing secrets to China.

When Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, laments the collapse of a high-profile espionage prosecution, his frustration reflects a deeper anxiety within Western intelligence communities that China’s espionage machine - diffuse and increasingly sophisticated - has learned to play the long game. The dropped case of Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher and Christopher Berry, a former civil servant, who were accused of spying for Beijing, underscored the disquieting truth that the reach of Chinese intelligence has become both harder to prove and harder to contain.

This mirrors other high-profile cases. Australian authorities in 2023 charged multiple academics for covertly funnelling research to Chinese institutions, while U.S. prosecutors have repeatedly targeted tech specialists suspected of aiding China’s state-backed industrial espionage programs.

For decades, Western intelligence regarded Chinese espionage as a plodding, bureaucratic cousin to Russia’s more flamboyant operations. Soviet and later Russian tradecraft relied on ideology, disinformation and the occasional theatrical poisoning. The Chinese model has been more patient and systemic: the quiet harvesting of information through academic exchanges, cyber intrusions and the cultivation of influence networks that blur the line between diplomacy and espionage.

McCallum’s admission that MI5 had disrupted another China-related plot in the past week suggested how pervasive the threat has become. The number of state-based investigations in Britain is up by more than a third in a year. The tempo mirrors trends across Europe, Australia and the United States, where the contest with Beijing has evolved into a struggle not just for military or economic supremacy, but for informational dominance.

To grasp the modern scale of Chinese espionage is to understand its origins. When Deng Xiaoping declared in 1978 that China must “hide its strength and bide its time,” his dictum applied as much to intelligence as to diplomacy. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) built a vast network of collectors: students, scientists, and businesspeople who, knowingly or not, became conduits of technology transfer. In the age of globalization, espionage ceased to be confined to shadowy operatives, becoming industrial policy by other means.

The result has been an espionage ecosystem both disciplined and decentralized. Chinese intelligence does not depend on spectacular agents embedded in the heart of Western government. Instead, it relies on a mosaic of sources - cyber hacks on government servers, insider leaks within technology firms, data scraped from social media, and pressure on diaspora communities to inform or influence.

That makes it particularly difficult for prosecutors to build cases that meet the standard of proof in open court. In espionage, much of what is known cannot be said; much of what can be said cannot be proved. The collapse of the Cash and Berry trial exposes this paradox. Intelligence can disrupt, but the law must convict. Between the two lies a chasm that Beijing has learned to exploit.

The United States has tightened scrutiny of Chinese students and researchers. Australia has passed sweeping foreign-interference laws. Britain is following suit, with new national security legislation expanding the definition of espionage to include ‘preparatory acts’ of foreign interference. Yet the more governments harden their systems, the more Beijing presents these measures as proof of Western paranoia and hypocrisy.

For China, espionage is not merely about stealing secrets but about shaping narratives and perceptions. Its intelligence apparatus is now intertwined with influence operations targeting media, think tanks, and even local councils. The objective is not only to know what others think, but to shape what they think about China. Espionage, after all, is not an aberration in China’s rise but an integral feature of it.

If the Cold War was fought in shadows cast by ideology, the new one is fought in the half-light of information. China has mastered that terrain. The West, still bound by the transparency it cherishes, must learn to navigate it without losing its way.