Chinese whispers on espionage
Prosecution collapse is another case of mixed messages from UK Government
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I am travelling at the moment so posting from me will be light for the next week or so, but I wanted to get down some quick thoughts on the collapse of a Chinese espionage case in the UK.
Many are blaming the Labour government for refusing to describe China a threat.1 Yet the case may already have been pretty weak. This line from the Guardian is key.
But the allegation that a Chinese official at the level of Cai [Qi] was in receipt of what is understood to have been unclassified Westminster gossip from two young researchers with no access to government has been met with scepticism by experts in Chinese politics2
As I wrote a year ago, there is a long history of different parts of the UK Government sending out different messages about what is acceptable in engaging with foreign powers.3 This case may be another example to add to the list.
Update: Mark Sedwill, who as Cabinet Secretary was the former top permanent official on the British Government, offers this comment on the case:
the idea that you could leak or sell or betray the secrets of this country to anyone who isn’t described as an enemy, and somehow or other, that means you couldn’t be prosecuted, I certainly didn’t understand that to be the case under the Official Secrets Act.
“Could you really have taken the whole nuclear deterrent and put it in a newspaper and that wouldn’t be a breach of the Official Secrets Act?4
Sedwill’s first point is hard to disagree with. It would be odd if the law gave carte blanche to the large number of authoritarian states which are not official enemies of the UK.
His second point is more contestable if the Guardian is correct and the alleged spies did not actually leak classified documents.
The relevant law has recently been tightened with a new National Security Act.
As I’m writing on the go, I’m not in a position to check the timeline, but one wonders whether it wouldn't have been better to allow the alleged spies to run until the new law was in place. Then again, the publicity around the case may have been helpful to the passage of the legislation.
Another important intervention has come from Professor Mark Elliott who offers a more critical view of the Prime Minister’s legal analysis.5
Dan Sabbagh, Legal experts question reasoning behind CPS dropping China ‘spies’ case, Guardian, 8 October 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/oct/08/uk-legal-experts-question-cps-drop-china-spies-case
Amy Hawkins and Dan Sabbagh, China’s fifth-ranking official was suspect in dropped Westminster spy case, Guardian, 2 October 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/02/uk-cps-china-official-intelligence-westminster-spy-case
The Perils of East-West Trade, 23 December 2024.
Ben Riley-Smith and Tony Diver, Starmer insists ministers weren’t involved in China spy case collapse, Telegraph, 10 October 2025. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a4a5de9b685a7184
Mark Elliott, On China. the Official Secrets Act and Enemies: Is the Prime Minister Wrong?, Public Law for Everyone, 8 October 2025 https://publiclawforeveryone.com/2025/10/08/on-china-the-official-secrets-act-and-enemies-is-the-prime-minister-wrong/