Explainer | Why is the Five Eyes intelligence alliance in Beijing’s cross hairs?

Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand toe delicate line as fellow member US battles China

Group is increasingly seen by Chinese leadership as an attempt by the US to dominate world affairs

Reading Time:4 minutes

Space officials from four of the Five Eyes – Australia, Canada, Britain and the US – attend a US Combined Force Space Component Command conference in 2019. Photo: Handout

Published: 8:00pm, 20 Jun 2020Updated: 11:07pm, 20 Jun 2020

As China and the United States ramp up their global sparring match, Beijing has increasingly seen its fight as one being waged with the world’s oldest intelligence alliance, the Five Eyes.

Tensions between Beijing and the alliance – comprising the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand – have grown more fraught in recent months, inflamed not only by the lowest relations between China and the US in decades but also by a host of issues on technology, trade and ideology.

Beijing has accused Five Eyes members of working with Washington to contain China, blasting Australia – for leading calls for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus outbreak – and Canada for the arrest of a Chinese hi-tech executive in response to an extradition request from the US.

At the end of May, Beijing bristled when foreign ministers from Britain, Australia, Canada and the US released a joint statement about the move to impose a national security law on Hong Kong, raising concerns it would erode freedoms and autonomy in the city.

While New Zealand did not take part, its foreign ministry said it shared “the deep concerns expressed by other democratic countries in their statements”. Beijing was not pleased, perceiving the US as leading the others in an effort to contain its rise.

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