Is China a major threat to British democracy? – Politics Weekly UK – podcast

Despite pressure from some Conservative MPs, the government stopped short of defining China as an official threat this week. How deep does Chinese interference in the UK go? John Harris speaks to the Guardian’s foreign leader writer Tania Branigan and deputy political editor, Peter Walker. As MPs break for Easter, they also discuss the state of the Conservative and Labour parties How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know The Guardian

Foreign Office summons senior Chinese diplomat over ‘malicious cyber activity’

Ministers summoned a senior Chinese diplomat to the Foreign Office on Tuesday after accusing Beijing-backed hackers of a cyber-attack on the British elections watchdog and a surveillance operation on politicians. The department called in China’s chargé d’affaires and told him the UK would not tolerate “threatening” cyber-attacks. An FCDO spokesperson said the ministry had “set out the government’s unequivocal condemnation of Chinese state-affiliated organisations and individuals undertaking malicious cyber activity against UK democratic institutions and parliamentarians”. “The UK government would not tolerate such threatening activity, and would continue to take…

Rishi Sunak faces grilling from MPs over economy, global issues and strategy – UK politics live

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Tuesday briefing: Why the US and UK are going public with warnings about Chinese hacking

Good morning. You’re probably not an MP or peer on the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac), so that part of yesterday’s cyber-attack revelations needn’t concern you excessively. If you are among the 40 million UK voters included on a register held by the Electoral Commission, though, I have bad news: the Chinese government has your personal details. Yesterday afternoon, deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden laid out sanctions in response to the attacks – in the case of the Electoral Commission hack, more than three years after it happened. In co-ordinated…

Does China spy on Britain? Of course. But we have more important things to discuss with them | Simon Jenkins

Once upon a time Britain would have sent a gunboat up the Yangtze River. That would teach those Chinese a lesson. To hear some MPs talk about Beijing’s espionage activities, you would think gunboats were already on their way. Of course, it is malicious and hurtful for a foreign state patently to hack into Britain’s Electoral Commission and target senior parliamentarians – as the government on Monday claimed China did in 2021. It is equally malicious to fabricate MPs’ emails and use a Commons researcher as an informant. No less…

China cyber-attacks: this growing threat to UK security will not go away

In March last year an integrated review of the UK’s defence and foreign policy said it would protect the country’s “democratic freedoms” from Chinese state attacks. A few months later the Electoral Commission confirmed why democratic institutions and processes were on the threat list as it revealed that a cyber-attack – by a then unidentified assailant – had accessed the data of 40 million voters. On Monday the UK government said an unnamed Chinese state-backed actor was behind the sortie and that a Beijing-affiliated group, called APT31, was likely to…

Is mild man Dowden up to the threat of China’s cyber campaign? | Zoe Williams

The deputy prime minister’s statement on cybersecurity and China-backed attempts to undermine UK democracy had been briefed far enough in advance that MPs had had time to sharpen their insults. Iain Duncan Smith said Oliver Dowden’s announcement was like watching an elephant giving birth to a mouse. The SNP member Stuart C McDonald accused Dowden of taking a wooden spoon to a gunfight. Labour’s Chris Bryant called him “wilfully blind, and therefore dangerous”. The inattentive observer might come away from the statement unclear on who posed the greater threat to…

Labour tells China it will act on interference in UK democracy

Labour has warned China that it will respond to any interference in UK democracy after the government announced fresh sanctions against hackers linked to Beijing. The warning came at the party’s first public meeting with the Chinese government since Keir Starmer became Labour leader. Catherine West, the shadow Asia minister, travelled to Beijing last week as part of a delegation of British MPs for meetings with senior Chinese government figures and businesses. On Thursday and Friday, West attended meetings with Wang Huning, one of Xi Jinping’s appointees to China’s powerful…

Chinese hackers targeted Electoral Commission and politicians, say security services

Chinese state-backed hackers were responsible for two malicious digital campaigns targeting the UK’s democratic institutions and politicians, the security services have found. The UK holds China responsible for a prolonged cyber-attack on the Electoral Commission during which Beijing allegedly accessed the personal details of about 40 million voters. The National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, also found that four British parliamentarians who have been critical of Beijing were targeted in a separate attack, although the activity was identified before any systems were compromised. Two individuals and a front company…

A Chinese ‘wolf warrior’ impersonated me, says Iain Duncan Smith

Iain Duncan Smith has said he was impersonated by a pro-China “wolf warrior” and has called for the country to be labelled a threat to UK security. The former Tory leader said on Monday that the “wolf warrior”, a term used for combative proponents of the Chinese government, had impersonated him and sent emails to politicians around the world suggesting he had changed his views about Beijing. He was speaking at a press conference with two other MPs who were briefed by security services on Monday about cyber-attacks against them…