Britain’s top spy warns that China ‘represents a huge threat to us all’

Sir Jeremy Fleming warns the CCP is using digital currency and satellites to tighten its grip in China and spread its influence abroad.

China's President Xi Jinping is widely expected to secure a third term as president at the Chinese Communist Party congress meeting starting on October 16.

Britain’s top spy has warned that the Chinese Communist Party is using digital currency and satellite systems to tighten its grip within China and spread its influence abroad which could “represent a huge threat to us all”.

In a keynote speech at the defence think tank RUSI to be delivered on Tuesday, the Director of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Sir Jeremy Fleming is to warn how China’s leaders are manipulating strategically important technologies.

He says China is seeking to create “client economies and governments” by exporting technology around the world. But he says, these countries then risk “mortgaging the future” by buying in Chinese tech with “hidden costs”.

Sir Jeremy says that the CCP wield power as a “tool to gain advantage through control of their markets, of those in their sphere of influence and of their own citizens’’.

In his speech, parts of which have been released this morning Australian time, Sir Jeremy says now is a sliding doors moment.

“It is no surprise that while the Chinese nation has worked to build its advanced economy, the Party has used its resources to implement draconian national security laws, a surveillance culture, and the increasingly aggressive use of military might,’’ he says.

“And we’re seeing that fear play out through the manipulation of the technological ecosystems which underpin our everyday lives – from monitoring its own citizens and restricting free speech to influencing financial systems and new domains.”

He says the Chinese state was trying to leverage technologies such as central bank digital currencies which would allow the state to monitor transactions, as well as partially evade the sort of international sanctions currently being applied to Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia.

He also warns about the BeiDou satellite system which the Chinese party has been forcing Chinese citizens and businesses to adopt as well as exporting it around the world.

Sir Jeremy will say: “Many believe that China is building a powerful anti-satellite capability, with a doctrine of denying other nations access to space in the event of a conflict. And there are fears the technology could be used to track individuals.”

He is to also raise the concept of smart cities, which, with the wrong technology, have the potential to export surveillance and data.