Beijing still trying to recruit British sources in parliament through LinkedIn regardless of provocation
An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.
It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful Ministry of State Security (MSS) still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.
In 2023, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said Chinese agents were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, at a rate of 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, military and technological secrets. But a fresh campaign aimed at politicians and parliament has led the spy agency to act again.
An espionage alert was issued on Tuesday via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, and his Lords equivalent: a single slide after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to contact MPs, peers, their staffers, economists, thinktanks – anybody who might become a source.
