China spied on Britain through hacked servers for at least 10 years, say sources

LONDON – Chinese hackers accessed classified British computer systems for more than a decade, sources familiar with the matter said, as

the British government published documents

acknowledging that it considered Beijing’s spying a threat to the economy and local democratic institutions.

China routinely accessed low- and medium-level classification information on British government servers over at least 10 years, according to two former senior security officials and other government officials familiar with the matter.

That included information marked official-sensitive and secret, as well as some material on the government’s secure information technology networks, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss matters of national security.

The data accessed included confidential documents relating to the formulation of government policy, private communications and some diplomatic cables, the sources said.

One described Chinese efforts to access British government systems as endless. Information and intelligence deemed top secret were not believed to have been compromised and are held securely, the sources said, pushing back against a report on Oct 15 in The Times newspaper.

One compromise related to a data centre in London used to store some sensitive government information, which was sold to an entity aligned to China when the Conservatives were in power, flagging major security concerns, one of the sources said, confirming a report in The Spectator.

Ministers in the then government briefly proposed a plan to destroy the data centre before it was made secure in a different way, they added.

A British government spokesman reiterated that the “most sensitive” government information and the systems on which it is stored were not known to have been compromised. The Chinese Embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside normal office hours.

Mr Ciaran Martin, the former head of the National Cyber Security Centre, told Bloomberg that “for many years China has been, and continues to be, a significant cyber-security threat to Britain and British interests”. Mr Martin said that “Chinese state actors target British government, commercial and other networks for espionage purposes”. He also said that China had not managed to access systems containing “highly classified state secrets”.

Chinese spying activities in Britain are facing new scrutiny in the wake of the

collapse of an espionage case

against two men accused of gathering intelligence on British policy towards China.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, prosecutors and members of the Conservative government in power when the charges were first brought have spent days trading blame over who was at fault.  

The Crown Prosecution Service has said that the case fell apart because successive British governments declined to formally designate China as a threat to national security.

Late on Oct 15, the government released three witness statements by Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins over the past two years in an attempt to show that Mr Starmer’s team had done its part to support the case.

While Mr Collins’ statements largely detail the activities at the centre of the case, his most recent submission in August said that “China’s espionage operations threaten Britain’s economic prosperity and resilience and the integrity of our democratic institutions”. He called China “the biggest state-based threat to Britain’s economic security” in another statement in February.

Such statements will likely prompt new questions for Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson by MPs about the decision to drop the case.

Still, Mr Collins said the government was committed to a “positive relationship” with Beijing and aimed to “strengthen understanding, cooperation and stability” in Britain’s relationship with the country.

The Chinese attempts to compromise British government computer systems over the past decade showed that Beijing posed a significant threat to national security, several of the sources told Bloomberg. All spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing highly sensitive information that has not been made public.

Britain’s official documents classification system has three levels, according to the government’s website. The first is “official”, which “includes routine business operations and services, some of which could have damaging consequences if lost, stolen, or published in the media, but which are not subject to a heightened threat profile”.

Secret information, some of which was accessed by China, according to the officials, is “where compromise might seriously damage military capabilities, international relations or the investigation of serious organised crime”, according to the website.

Top secret information is the government’s “most sensitive information, requiring the highest levels of protection from the most serious threats, where compromise might cause widespread loss of life or else threaten the security or economic well-being of the country”. That has not been compromised, the sources said.

Mr Starmer has been criticised by opposition politicians for pursuing a thaw in relations with Beijing despite repeated allegations that China is behind espionage attempts and cyber attacks in Britain and has provided support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

The Prime Minister also faces pressure from members of his own Cabinet not to approve an application by China for a new mega-embassy in London. Top foreign office official Olly Robbins is visiting Beijing to push officials there to allow Britain to refurbish its own embassy in China.

This week, Britain’s domestic security service MI5 warned lawmakers and their staff of espionage efforts by China and Russia, while its cyber-security agency reported a

50 per cent rise in serious cyber attacks

over the last year, with China described as the “pacing threat”. 

In 2024, Bloomberg reported that British government officials feared Chinese state actors had made widespread and likely successful efforts to access British critical infrastructure networks.

Earlier on Oct 15, former prime minister Boris Johnson’s chief of staff in Downing Street, Mr Dominic Cummings, told The Times newspaper that China had hacked secret information from the British government’s classified computer system.

“Vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised,” Mr Cummings said.

Mr Tom Tugendhat, who served as security minister in the Conservative administrations of former prime ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak that followed Mr Johnson’s, told LBC radio on Oct 15 that “the gist of what Dominic Cummings has put out is correct”, but declined to be more specific. BLOOMBERG