MI5 and FBI team up to deliver extreme China warning

Two top international agencies have teamed up in a rare move to deliver a monumental warning about China’s growing influence in the West.

Two top international agencies have teamed up to deliver a rare and extreme warning about China and the global threat posed by the Asian power.

In a joint address, the heads of British intelligence agency MI5 and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed China’s Communist Party was “covertly applying pressure across the globe”, with the world now facing a “game-changing challenge”.

Speaking to an audience of business leaders and academic chiefs at MI5 headquarters in London, MI5 director general Ken McCallum and FBI director Chris Wray said both countries were facing growing threats from Chinese spies.

As a result, MI5 had been forced to expand its China-focused operations, Mr McCallum said.

“Today we’re running seven times as many investigations as we were in 2018,” he said.

“We plan to grow as much again, while also maintaining significant effort against Russian and Iranian covert threats.”

FBI director Christopher Wray. Picture: Graeme Jennings/AFP

MI5 director general Ken McCallum. Picture: Sky News

Mr McCallum said China was the most significant threat as it “pervades so many aspects of our national life”.

“By volume, most of what is at risk from Chinese Communist Party aggression is not, so to speak, my stuff. It’s yours – the world-leading expertise, technology, research and commercial advantage developed and held by people in this room, and others like you,” he said.

Mr Wray claimed the threat from China was a “complex, enduring and pervasive danger”, not only to the US and Britain, but many other countries as well.

He told the room full of business and university executives that China was “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market”.

The pair also warned against the wide-reaching impact if China were to “forcibly take over Taiwan”, which is viewed by Beijing as a breakaway province.

Mr Wray claimed a situation like this would “represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen”.

This is the first time the FBI and MI5 have shared a public platform, with the agency heads saying they are doing so in order to “send the clearest signal we can” on the threats posed by China.

Both men urged businesses to stay alert and report possible threats.

“The Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not to emulate them, sadly, but to use them for its gain,” Mr McCallum said.

China’s President Xi Jinping. Picture: Selim Chtayti/AFP

China tensions with Australia heighten

Australia’s relationship with China continues to be strained, with Beijing claiming hopes for a reset in relations between Australia and China were “diminishing by the day”.

CCP-backed publication China Daily claimed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had drawn parallels between the Ukraine war and China’s interest in the Pacific, particularly Taiwan, prompting swift backlash from the Communist Party.

“It is hard to believe that the new Australian leader can be so ill-informed as to not know China’s stance on the Ukraine crisis, which it has clarified on multiple occasions, or that he can be so ignorant as not to understand the status of Taiwan,” the China Daily column read.

“The takeaway from his words then is that while he might talk of wanting to improve his country’s relations with China, he is either going to have to make dedicated efforts to better understand the issues that have led to bilateral ties deteriorating precipitously or be more diplomatically astute.”

There were hopes that a new Labor government would lead to a more amicable relationship with China, which was fraught during former prime minister Scott Morrison’s leadership.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong signalled this week that she was open to meeting with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the upcoming G20 foreign ministers meeting, but warned any diplomatic improvements would require Beijing to scrap its “coercive” trade sanctions.

Penny Wong has said she would be open to meeting with her Chinese government counterpart. Picture: DFAT/Sarah Friend

If the meeting went ahead, it would be the first between Beijing and Canberra’s foreign ministers since 2019 and would follow Defence Minister Richard Marles’ meeting with his counterpart in Singapore last month.

“We said prior to the election that we obviously were going to remain calm, considered and disciplined in terms of how we spoke about our engagement with and our relationship with China,” Ms Wong said on Wednesday.

“We are upfront that there are obviously challenges in that relationship. It’s a complex and consequential relationship.

“We do maintain the concern which we have raised publicly about the existence and continuation of what we regard as coercive trade and economic measures against Australia.”