My Take | New China spy case about Tory aide sounds like more British paranoia
- The China threat has much more to do with the insecurity and indecision of the West towards the country, the emerging multipolar world and the erosion of Western dominance
First it was a big fat balloon observable from many kilometres from the ground that was supposedly spying on the United States. Now, a 20-something parliamentary researcher who liked to flirt on a dating app is suspected of being a China spy inside Westminster.
Some Anglo-American media are already warning or rather goading that the already fraught relationship between China and Britain is set for a free fall.
Frankly, the timings are more interesting than the disclosures themselves.
The Chinese weather balloon was tracked for many weeks by the Pentagon, which initially concluded it wasn’t a threat. Then some anti-China hawks in the US Congress were unhappy about a scheduled visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, and suddenly, American news headlines were all about the spy balloon. That, in turn, caused Blinken to postpone his trip.
This time around, the exposé of a Tory parliamentary researcher as an alleged China spy coincided nicely with a diplomatic mission to China by British Foreign Minister James Cleverly, who has been trying to make nice with the Chinese, up to a point, as the Brits like to say.
But the suspected spy, it turns out, was actually arrested long ago in March under a section of the Official Secrets Act that dates from 1911, but is so far not charged. He must have been – allegedly – committing some really obscure offence(s) for the authorities to resort to such an archaic law.