China Accused of Economic Espionage on an Unprecedented Scale

United States and Australian intelligence bosses have accused China of intellectual property theft on an unprecedented scale. 

The scathing criticism comes as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prepares to visit China later this year in a bid to ease friction with his country’s biggest trading partner.

It is rare for the heads of Australia’s spy agencies to publicly rebuke another country by name.

But speaking at a media briefing ahead of an intelligence conference in Palo Alto, California, Mike Burgess, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, known as ASIO, was blunt about the threat from China.

Burgess said China’s economic espionage went far beyond “traditional” spying because it had been approved by the government over many years to the detriment of other countries.

“All nations spy. All nations seek secrets and all nations seek strategic advantage but the behavior we are talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage and the threat is that we have the Chinese government engaged in the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and acquisition of expertise that is unprecedented in human history,” he said.

China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, but bilateral relations have deteriorated in recent years over various geopolitical and trade disputes, as well as tensions over the origins of COVID-19.  Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is expected to visit Beijing in the coming months – the first official visit to Beijing by an Australian leader in seven years. Albanese has insisted there would be disagreements as he seeks to stabilize ties. 

Burgess’ comments came during a major Five Eyes summit in California.

The Five Eyes alliance includes the United States, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.  It was set up after World War II to share intelligence and coordinate security efforts.

Intelligence leaders from the alliance traveled to California at the invitation of FBI Director Christopher Wray.  They cautioned that greater awareness is needed to ensure new technologies are protected.

Wray called the Chinese Communist Party the “number one threat to innovation”, insisting it had made economic espionage “a central component of its national strategy.”  He said that in recent years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had seen “about a 1,300% increase in investigations” that were linked to attempts to “steal intellectual property or other secrets by some form of the Chinese government.”

There has, so far, been no response from officials in Beijing.

Both the United States and Australia have also warned of the heightened threat of violence on home soil resulting from Israel’s war with the militant group, Hamas.