The UK government did consider China a threat and potential enemy in 2021, 2022 and 2023
Transparency is urgently needed
In recent weeks, a political storm has developed over the collapse of the prosecution of Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry for spying for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The prosecution was under the now replaced Official Secrets Act (1911). It would be tedious to go through all aspects of the current controversy in detail, and of course no comment is made here about the guilt or innocence of either man, but per Sky:
“Christopher Cash, 30, a former director of the Beijing-sceptic China Research Group of Tory MPs, and financial analyst Christopher Berry, 33, were arrested two years ago.
“They were charged in April 2024 with passing politically sensitive information to a Chinese intelligence agent between December 2021 and February 2023.
“The pair, who previously taught in China together, denied allegations they provided information prejudicial to the interests of the state in breach of the Official Secrets Act.”
Whether – and, if so, then how and why – Cash had access to information covered by the OSA remains unclear.
The current controversy relates to the question of whether the PRC could be considered an ‘enemy’ (the law makes clear this really means ‘potential enemy’, therefore ‘threat’) for the purposes of the OSA, an essential element for the prosecution to succeed and the potential basis on which, some evidence suggests, it was abandoned.
As well as being essential for the prosecution, the question of whether the PRC is a ‘threat’ or a ‘potential enemy’ has enjoyed political attention in recent years. Anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) MPs have pressured successive governments to use that sort of language, to talk about hostile CCP activity, and so on. Cash himself was part of the China Research Group, operating in the same small Westminster China milieu as the Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), source of much of the current pressure on the government and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to be transparent about the case’s collapse.
The ‘PRC enemy’ question has also been relevant for the administration of the new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), which has two tiers: a general tier that applies to all countries, and an enhanced tier into which can be placed specific countries or organisations. The pressure upon successive governments to classify the PRC or the CCP as a ‘threat’ or ‘enemy’ must be seen in the light of FIRS’s enhanced tier too.
It is worth noting that, in a 2017 paper, the Law Commission warned that “having to designate that state in court as an enemy of the United Kingdom could have negative diplomatic consequences [...] We provisionally conclude that the inclusion of the term “enemy” has the potential to inhibit the ability to prosecute those who commit espionage.”
So, a political question, with important recent history, has had new life breathed into it because of its bearing on this important case. It is an awkward meeting of politics and justice – one created by a term in a law that seemed naturally to warrant government guidance or definition in a way that had already been signposted as a potential problem (this is not a straightforward case of interference in the judiciary, then).
Cash and Berry’s prosecution depended, we have now been told by the Director for Public Prosecutions (DPP), on the current government allowing evidence to be provided that, in the period of the no-longer alleged offences (December 2021 to February 2023), the PRC was or posed a threat to the UK’s national security. To quote from the DPP’s letter to MPs sent on the 7th of October:
“It is the legal responsibility of the CPS to independently assess the evidence in every case. That responsibility is an ongoing obligation throughout the life of a case. I am satisfied that the decision to charge this case in April 2024 was correct. This was on the basis of where the law stood at that time in relation to the requirements of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Some weeks later, a High Court decision (R v Roussev and others 2024) ruled that “enemy” for the purposes of the 1911 Act includes a country which represents at the time of the offence, a threat to the national security of the UK.
“In the light of this new judgment, it was considered that further evidence should be obtained. Efforts to obtain that evidence were made over many months, but notwithstanding the fact that further witness statements were provided, none of these stated that at the time of the offence China represented a threat to national security, and by late August 2025 it was realised that this evidence would not be forthcoming. When this became apparent, the case could not proceed. This was a professional assessment made by CPS lawyers experienced in prosecuting national security and espionage cases, applying the Code for Crown Prosecutors.”
Read the DPP’s letter and the press summary below.
Legal experts are now publicly questioning, per Sky again, “why the CPS spent months trying to get the government to provide evidence, in the form of ministers and officials saying whether China is a national security threat.” It has also been alleged that the decision was made by senior government advisors to ensure the evidence required “would not be forthcoming”.
The main purpose of this blog is to highlight the rather strong evidence that the government did consider the PRC a threat to national security in the period in question. This evidence is in the public domain, and it is perfectly compelling.
In July 2022, the head of MI5 explicitly referred to the CCP and the PRC state as a threat. Per a live gov.uk site, at a public press conference in July 2022:
“MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and FBI Director Chris Wray have warned of the growing threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to UK and US interests. [...] The Director General [McCallum] said: [...]
“And then there’s Cyber. A wide range of government and commercial targets were attacked by the three so-called ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’ groups which the UK government has attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security [MSS].”
The use of the term ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’ (APT) (a normal and widely used acronym in the cybersecurity industry) to describe cyberattack groups gives vivid expression to the fact that such groups are hostile to the UK and indeed actively undermining our national security and prosperity. They are not called “Advanced Challenges”, or anything like that. They are persistent threats precisely because they have already caused damage and continuously pose the threat of doing so again – and again and again.
Indeed, billions of pounds of public money – not to mention billions in the private sector – are spent addressing PRC cyber-attacks and the threat that they will continue. In 2016, the government set up the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It has a multibillion-pound budget and more than 1000 employees.
In the period in question (December 2021 to February 2023), the NCSC repeatedly referred to hostile activity and the threat from the PRC. Its 2022 annual review had a whole section on “State Threats”, which included a seven paragraph subsection on China. It referred to the MSS as “a prolific and pervasive actor in cyberspace, undertaking a substantial global espionage campaign”, and concluded:
“The global scale of activity from these organisations has been well documented and the UK Government has called out various examples of malign Chinese behaviour in cyberspace, including the compromise of thousands of enterprises’ Exchange servers around the world, through exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability.
“Chinese activity has become ever more sophisticated, with China increasingly targeting third-party technology and service supply chains, as well as successfully exploiting software vulnerabilities. This approach shows no sign of abating.”
This is not just about statements and policy papers. In the period in question, thousands of government employees and billions of pounds of government work and procurement money were predicated upon the fact that the government considered the PRC a source of hostile activity – not even a threat then, but an attacker. An enemy, in the cyber domain at least.
The cyber domain is not some abstraction irrelevant to our everyday lives. UK-China Transparency has put together a long list of PRC hostile cyber activity affecting the UK which makes clear that cyber-attacks can affect every part of our society’s functioning, from social care to factory production lines and the running of elections and democratic politics.
In November 2022, Ken McCallum returned to China in his “annual threat update” (the clue, again, is in the name). He made clear the government considered the PRC hostile beyond cyber. Again, we can read McCallum’s words today on a live gov.uk site:
“We’re seeing an increasingly assertive Chinese Communist Party using overt and covert pressure to bend other countries to its will. [...]
“The Chinese authorities use all the means at their disposal to monitor - and where they deem necessary intimidate - the Chinese diaspora. This takes place all over the world, from coercing and forcibly repatriating Chinese nationals to harassment and assault.
“This was brought home recently when a pro-democracy protester appeared to be the subject of violence outside the Chinese Consulate in Manchester. We’re seeing further indications of that repression. Recent media coverage has focused on so-called overseas Chinese police stations. But this activity extends to using the United Front Work Department and other front organisations to apply pressure to those challenging the regime’s perceived ‘core interests’ – whether that’s on democracy in Hong Kong or human rights abuses in Xinjiang. We can expect it to increase further as President Xi consolidates power on an indefinite basis.
“To intimidate or harass UK nationals or those who have made the UK their home cannot be tolerated.
“MI5 has an important part to play in countering these threats. [continues...]”
Many members of the Chinese diaspora in the UK are British citizens. This was a clear expression from a senior government official of a threat posed by the CCP and PRC state apparatus to those citizens.
MI6, too, made clear in the period in question that the government considered the PRC a threat and potential enemy. In November 2021 (a month before the no-longer alleged activity began), the then head of MI6, Richard Moore, said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies that is still hosted on a gov.uk site:
“I will speak to you today about this mission, seen through the lens of what I earlier called the ‘big 4’ set of threats: China, Russia, Iran and international terrorism, as well as the over-arching technological challenge. [...]
“... China is an authoritarian state, with different values from ours. This is reflected in the threats we see emanating from the Chinese state, that coexist with these opportunities for cooperation.”
Earlier that year, in March, the government published its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy 2021. It was not updated until March 2023. On the PRC, the original review stated that:
“We will continue to pursue a positive trade and investment relationship with China, while ensuring our national security and values are protected.”
There is no need for protective measures where there is no threat. The Review continued:
“Open, trading economies like the UK will need to engage with China and remain open to Chinese trade and investment, but they must also protect themselves against practices that have an adverse effect on prosperity and security.”
Hostile practices, then.
This is not rocket science; nor is it cherry picking. One could spend days amassing evidence similar to that explored here. No mention has been made of AUKUS, the UK-US-Australia defence alliance, or of UK freedom of navigation operations in East Asia. No mention has been made of the Defending Democracy work, or of government work on the activities of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, or the Joint State Threats Assessment Team created in 2017, with its growing (per the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament’s 2023 report) number of PRC-focused staff. One wonders what they make of the current controversy.
As for Moore’s “opportunities for cooperation” or the Review’s “positive trade and investment relationship” - whatever the truth about the current government’s cooperation or non-cooperation with the CPS, or the nature of the evidence they provided, the defence in the ‘two Chrises’ case would have highlighted this context and used it to attack the prosecution’s position. The prosecution might in turn have argued that the fact that there are opportunities for constructive cooperation does not abnegate the reality of hostile activity.
The fact remains: successive Prime Ministers or Foreign Secretaries, for diplomatic reasons, may not have said it, but in 2021, 2022 and 2023, the government considered China a threat and worse, a source of actual hostile activity. Huge resources were mobilised to address the problem, reams of unreleased internal documentation were generated about it, and it was explicitly and publicly described by the most senior government officials.
Further transparency, with due respect to normal principles of justice, is needed.