It looked like the plot of one of the episodes of the television spy series "The Bureau". A high-ranking French intelligence official known as Henri M. is assigned to Beijing, where he falls in love with the ambassador's translator and begins passing classified information to the enemy.
Soon after, he was returned to France and in 2020 was sentenced to eight years in prison for passing information to a foreign power - even though he committed the crime two decades earlier. Another agent, known as Pierre Marie H., who continued to spy for China until his arrest in 2017, was sentenced to 12 years at the same trial.
The harsh sentences for the agents and France's decision to highlight their activities by holding the trial reflect growing concern in Europe that the scale of China's espionage operations is growing and that they pose a greater threat than that of Russia.
"Chinese intelligence operatives are on a par with the Russians," said the former European representative of the CIA, the American intelligence agency.
"China's top ops are now on par with Russia's top ops," one Western intelligence official confirmed. Some of them are "exceptional... in terms of patience," said another.
China is already known for advanced cyber attacks, such as the 2021 Microsoft hack that compromised 30 organizations globally and which the US, EU and Britain allege was carried out by criminal groups working for Beijing. China rejected the accusations, calling them "baseless and irresponsible".
China's intelligence activities have reached a level of sophistication commonly associated with Russian espionage, eight current and former Western intelligence officials said, adding to concerns for the West.
"The Russians have been doing espionage since the time of the tsars (before the Soviet Union), they just enjoy it," said Alex Younger, former head of MI6, the British intelligence service. "Traditionally the Chinese have been weaker in human espionage activities, but they are learning fast."
The rise of China's ruling Communist Party's covert activities is a "game-changing" challenge, according to Ken McCallum, the head of Britain's domestic intelligence service MI5, and Christopher Wray, director of the FBI.
"We are not panicking for no reason," McCallum said at a joint conference with Vreja in July in London. His warning should be taken seriously considering that it was delivered at the moment of the Russian attack on Ukraine, the biggest security threat in Europe in the last generation.
Because China's espionage techniques differ greatly from Russia's, Western agencies must change their approach to counterintelligence activities.
Christina Lee, a British lawyer, was singled out by MI5 this year when she took the unusual step of issuing a public warning that he was an "agent of influence" for China, even though her alleged pro-China offenses were not of a criminal nature.
"Chinese espionage is not even a variant of the Russian approach," another intelligence official said. "The very definition of a Chinese agent can be difficult."
Officials say Russian operations abroad still traditionally employ elite agents, trained in espionage techniques such as encrypted communications, to achieve a specific security objective. China, however, has broader goals ranging from political influence to acquiring trade or technological secrets.
The difference in the espionage styles of China and Russia is represented by a saying in which intelligence targets are represented as grains of sand. While the Russians would surface with a submarine at night and send a small group to the beach to fetch a bucket of sand, the Chinese would send thousands of bathers in broad daylight to fetch a larger quantity or a grain of sand each.
"Russian espionage tends to be narrowly focused, while China takes a 'whole society approach,'" said one intelligence official. China's 2017 Intelligence Law requires that “all organizations and citizens support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts”.
Russian espionage also tends to be extremely risky, even "violent," a fourth official said, citing the 2018 poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England as an example.
"The Russians can be clumsy, quite arrogant, and sometimes seem to have a "catch me if you can" mentality, while the Chinese would rather avoid any kind of spy scandal because they want to preserve good bilateral relations," added the former CIA agent.
The difference in the two countries' styles is illustrated by a saying often cited by Western officials in which intelligence targets are represented as grains of sand. While the Russians would surface with a submarine at night and send a small group to the beach to fetch a bucket of sand, the Chinese would send thousands of bathers in broad daylight to fetch a larger quantity or a grain of sand each.
The result, according to Nicholas Eftimiades, a China expert and former CIA official, is "a new paradigm for how intelligence activities are conducted."
Such tactics can lead to uncoordinated espionage, Western officials said, with multiple Chinese agents sometimes approaching the same target. However, it is often effective.
According to one American estimate, Chinese espionage steals $600 billion worth of American intellectual property each year. China rejects these allegations. The EU estimates that the total theft of intellectual property costs it 50 billion euros each year and results in the loss of 671 jobs.
An additional challenge, according to officials, is identifying exactly who is a Chinese spy while not using racial profiling of potential suspects.
Again, the difference compared to Russia is striking. European capitals have expelled more than 600 Russian diplomats and alleged spies since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine this year.
However, "a similar situation with Beijing would be much more difficult", officials said, because the relationship between the Chinese state and its actors can be weak and fluid.
Some counterintelligence officials also believe that the "grains of sand" analogy may be misleading because it obscures China's more recent, more sophisticated activities.
Regardless of the approach, Western agencies are struggling to cope with the high volume of cases.
The FBI said it was opening a new investigation into Chinese espionage every 12 hours as MI5's caseload rose sevenfold on 2018.
Wray, the head of the FBI, said: "The scale of China's efforts is breathtaking."
Translation: N. Bogetić
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