Beijing claims Chinese officials were recruited by Britain’s MI6

China has accused Britain’s secret intelligence service MI6 of recruiting a couple who worked for the central government to spy for the UK.

The headquarters of MI6 on the River Thames in London. Picture: iStock

China has accused Britain’s secret intelligence service MI6 of recruiting a couple who worked for the central government to spy for the UK, adding to months of mutual espionage allegations between Beijing and Western powers.

The Ministry of State Security said in a post on WeChat that MI6 operatives convinced a man surnamed Wang, who worked in a “core confidential role” in the central state apparatus, to defect with his wife, surnamed Zhou.

“Recently, after careful investigation, the national security ­organs uncovered a major espionage case in which the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) instigated a couple, Wang and Zhou, who were staff members of a central state agency of China, to defect,” it said.

The ministry said British spies began cultivating Wang after he began a course of study in Britain in 2015, arranging dinners and tours for him in order to “understand his character weaknesses, interests and demands”.

After learning that Wang “had a strong desire for money”, they then approached him to provide well-paid consulting services that came to involve the ­internal workings of central state agencies, the ministry said.

MI6 operatives later revealed their identities to Wang and ­directed him to return to China to collect intelligence, convincing him to coerce Zhou into doing the same.

The Chinese statement gave no details of Wang or Zhou’s current occupations in China, the nature of the information they provided, or their whereabouts.

Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which handles MI6 press inquiries, was contacted for comment.

China and Western powers have long traded accusations of spying but only recently started to disclose details of alleged individual cases.

Last month, British police said Matthew Trickett, who had been charged with helping Hong Kong to gather intelligence in the UK, had been found dead in unexplained circumstances.

And in April, German authorities arrested four people on suspicion of spying for China, in the same week that British police charged two men with passing sensitive information to Beijing between 2021 and last year.

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