The British government yesterday said it had summoned Chinese Ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang (鄭澤光), a day after three people were charged in the latest Beijing-linked alleged espionage case.
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was “unequivocal in setting out that the recent pattern of behaviour directed by China against the UK, including cyberattacks, reports of espionage links and the issuing of bounties, is not acceptable,” a spokesperson said.
The office said that the summons followed Monday’s announcement that three people had been charged with assisting Hong Kong’s intelligence service.
Photo: Reuters
The three are: Bill Yuen Chung-biu (袁松彪), 63, the office manager of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London; Wai Chi-leung or Peter Wai (衛志良), 38, a dual British and Chinese national who is a UK Border Force officer and ran his own private security firm; and Matthew Trickett, 37, a former Royal Marine commando who runs a private security firm.
They are charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service between December last year and this month by “agreeing to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception” in Britain, according to the charges brought in court. They are also charged with conducting “foreign interference” by forcing entry into a residential home.
All the offenses fall under the UK’s National Security Act, which introduced new measures last year against foreign threats, including espionage and interference. The charges do not name the specific Hong Kong intelligence service.
Photo: Reuters
They face a maximum possible sentence of 14 years for each charge. They were not asked to enter any pleas and are next to appear at London’s Old Bailey court on May 24. The men were granted bail, but have curfew and travel restrictions.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street office called the charges “deeply concerning.”
However, the Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong “strongly condemned” the UK for “cooking up charges” and accused it of a “vicious intention to interfere” in Hong Kong’s affairs.
It warned that Britain would receive “China’s firm and strong retaliation.”
Earlier yesterday, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) called for full information from British authorities on the arrests of three men.
Speaking to reporters, Lee confirmed that one of the men, Yuen, was a university classmate who was photographed with Lee in a group graduation photograph from 2002.
Lee cited a statement from the Chinese embassy in London rejecting what it called “the UK’s fabrication” of the case and its “unwarranted accusation” against the Hong Kong government.
Asked whether Hong Kong authorities had spent any resources to perform surveillance on individuals in Britain, including Hong Kong activists, Lee did not directly address the question.
Separately, the head of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s intelligence, security and cyberagency, yesterday warned that China posed a “genuine and increasing cyber risk.”
“China has built an advanced set of cybercapabilities and is taking advantage of a growing commercial ecosystem of hacking outfits and data brokers at its disposal,” GCHQ Director Anne Keast-Butler said at the Cyber UK conference in Birmingham, England.
“Through their coercive and destabilizing actions, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] poses a significant risk to international norms and values,” she added.
The GCHQ now devotes “more resource to China than any other single mission,” she said.
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