China’s battle for a giant ‘spy base’ in London

The line between their diplomatic staff and their intelligence agents is pretty blurry,” said Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, who added that China’s tactic seemed to be expanding its ‘human intelligence” capability. “They are all paid by the state and any one of them could have that dual-hat responsibility. Take cultural attachés: the Communist Party is all about culture. It’s a good assumption that most of these staff, if either not fully trained members of Chinese intelligence, are certainly tasked with providing information.” Arnold said it was the scale of the Chinese presence that was unusual. “The way that the Chinese operate, whether it’s diplomacy or intelligence gathering, is at a scale. It’s a volume game. The more people you have the more contact you can have and the greater chances of success are.”