China’s spy ministry raises alert over foreign NGO theft of ‘environmental data’
- Under academic cover, unnamed groups collected sensitive information on nature reserves, State Security Ministry says
- In one case, local staff were lured with various inducements, including sex
The allegations were outlined in an article posted on the Ministry of State Security’s public WeChat account, and referred to two cases of theft of “geographical, meteorological, biological and other sensitive data from China’s important nature reserves, posing risks and hazards to national security”.
In the first case, a professor from an unnamed country “illegally collected” data from an unspecified national wetland reserve and forest area, it said.
The ministry said the professor confessed to collecting and stealing data “under the cover of academic cooperation”.
The ministry said the academic was punished, but did not say what the penalties were.
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In another case, a “foreign university” cooperated with the scientific management arm of a national nature reserve in southwest China with the support of a foreign non-governmental organisation (NGO).