Even if the leadership in Beijing denies it, experts have been warning for years about China's various attempts to destabilize Western democracies.
Recent arrests in Germany lend weight to those warnings.
The press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing is one of the rare opportunities for journalists to ask questions of China's state and party leaders. Spokesman Wang Wenbin, one of the speakers, strongly rejected accusations of espionage. As he said, he is exaggerating about what does not exist.
The spokesman accused Germany of using recent events to manipulate political narratives. The goal, he says, is clear: to disrupt the atmosphere of cooperation between China and Europe.
For observers, this is the expected reaction: "China basically always denies everything when it comes to such accusations," says Marajke Olberg, who researches China's influence on democracies in the Asia program of the American foundation German Marshall Fund in Berlin.
Olberg says he cannot judge the statements in individual cases, "but the substantive denial is, of course, absurd - we know that China is spying and doing it relatively systematically."
Espionage at different levels
With the expansion of power and control of the Communist Party under state leadership and party chief Xi Jinping, China's secret services and surveillance authorities have also grown more powerful in recent years. Among other things, technology such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence is increasingly being used.
But they don't just monitor critics of their country's government or minorities like the Uyghurs. Secret services and security agencies around the world have been pointing to Chinese influence and espionage abroad for years.
In countries like the US, Australia and Canada, people are already very concerned about the threat. There are many different forms of espionage, Olberg says: "Sometimes it's espionage at the political level, when you're trying to influence political decision makers and get information."
Of course, there is also industrial espionage. "There is espionage where the goal is to obtain knowledge for military use. There is also an attempt to take action against people - usually of Chinese origin - who are considered dissidents or critics. This is done by collecting information about them."
Bring unrest to democracies
On Monday, two men and one woman were arrested in the German states of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is claimed that they obtained information on military technology in order to pass it on to Chinese intelligence.
An associate of the German politician from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party Maksimilian Krach was also arrested in Saxony on Tuesday. The associate is also said to have spied for China.
The fact that China is trying to influence parties like the AfD is not a surprise, says political scientist Ralf Weber from the University of Basel. In addition to gathering information, the state and party leadership of China has a general interest in causing unrest and discord in democracies, according to Weber.
"It's good for a one-party state, because it wants to show that liberal democracies are a mess and that they don't work. China wants to say: 'We are a different model and our authoritarian model works'."
In addition, Weber says, there could be the possibility of introducing certain agenda items into the democratic process in order to influence public opinion about China.
Current cases are only the "tip of the iceberg"?
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) are increasingly warning about Chinese espionage attempts in Germany.
Marajke Olberg estimates that the cases that have now become known are only the tip of the iceberg "and that there are several more cases that have not yet been discovered or that have not yet been publicly announced - and probably both."
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