AS A FOOTNOTE to this Bystander’s thoughts about international trust in China in the previous post, German prosecutors announced the arrest of an aide to a member of the European Parliament on suspicion of ‘especially severe’ espionage for China.
This came a day after three German nationals were arrested on suspicion of spying for China and handing over technology with military applications, and on the same day as two UK citizens were charged with spying for China, including one reported to have worked as a parliamentary researcher for a member of the UK parliament belonging to the governing Conservative Party.
In the United States last year, a Chinese engineer who had been a graduate student in Chicago was sentenced to eight years in prison for spying for China. State-backed Chinese hackers have been accused of stealing data from both the private and public sectors and targeting US critical infrastructure.
Growing concerns over Chinese espionage will increase political pressure on governments to adopt a more hawkish position towards Beijing.
However, as the visit last week by German Chancellor German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Beijing suggests, Germany will aim to continue treating security concerns and economic cooperation as separate issues.
That aligns with a strategy document released last year for Germany’s relations with China, in which the government underlined Berlin’s systemic rivalry with Beijing. This required it to reduce the risks of economic dependency. Yet Germany also wished to maintain strong trade ties and work with China on issues such as climate change.
With every instance of espionage, the trust needed to walk that fine line is eroded further.
The Chinese embassy in Berlin said Beijing firmly rejected accusations that it carried out spying activities in Germany. While that is to be expected, and every country that can spies on others, the embassy’s wolf-warrior tone—’We call on Germany to desist from exploiting the espionage accusation to politically manipulate the image of China and defame China’—does little to enhance trust, either.
China Bystander 