After British authorities arrested a man accused of spying for China within the heart of the UK government, concerns increased about China’s intelligence-gathering methods, including cyber warfare, technology sector fears, and industrial and military espionage.

British authorities have arrested a man who reportedly spied for China at the heart of the government in London, sparking fresh fears over how Beijing gathers intelligence. China said on Monday it “resolutely opposes” allegations that an espionage suspect arrested in the United Kingdom was gathering information for Beijing. The incident follows allegations earlier this year that China flew a surveillance balloon over the United States, causing a diplomatic furor.

Here are some of the ways China has worked to spy on the West recently:

Cyber warfare

According to researchers and Western intelligence officials, China has become adept at hacking rival nations’ digital systems to gather trade secrets. US government statements and media reports said that Chinese spies have also hacked the US energy department, utility companies, telecommunications firms and universities. However, the United States also has its ways of spying on China, deploying surveillance and interception techniques and a network of informants.

Tech fears

In the technology sector, there are concerns that China’s state-linked firms would be obliged to share intel with their government. In 2019, the US Department of Justice charged tech giant Huawei with conspiring to steal US trade secrets, among other offenses. Huawei denies the charges. Similar anxiety over TikTok, developed by China’s ByteDance, animates Western political debate, with some lawmakers calling for an outright ban on the app over data security fears.

Industrial and military espionage

According to experts, US lawmakers, and media reports, Beijing has leaned on Chinese citizens abroad to gather intelligence and steal sensitive technology. Last year, a US court sentenced a Chinese intelligence officer to 20 years in prison for stealing technology from US and French aerospace firms. In 2020, a US court jailed Raytheon engineer Wei Sun, a Chinese national and naturalized US citizen, for bringing sensitive information about an American missile system into China on a company laptop.

Spying on politicians

Chinese operatives have allegedly courted political, social and business elites in Britain and the United States. According to The Sunday Times, the alleged British spy arrested Saturday had contacts with MPs from the ruling Conservative Party while working as a parliamentary researcher and has worked on international policy, including relations with Beijing.

‘Police stations’

Another technique used by Chinese operatives is to tout insider knowledge about the Communist Party’s opaque inner workings and dangle access to top leaders to lure high-profile Western targets, researchers say. In September 2022, Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders said China had set up 54 overseas “police stations” around the world, allegedly to target Communist Party critics. Beijing has denied the claims.

Miroslava Salazar, with AFP