Top UK spy chief to warn of China’s huge technological threat

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to use technologies such as digital currencies and satellite systems to strengthen its grip on power at home and spread influence abroad, a top UK spy chief will say in a speech on Tuesday.

China's leadership is using its financial and scientific muscle to manipulate strategically important technologies that shape the global tech ecosystem and the CCP's actions "represent a huge threat to us all", GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming will say in the speech, according to pre-released extracts.

GCHQ is an intelligence, cyber and security agency that works closely with MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the military and international partners to counter threats from criminal groups and terrorists.

Fleming is scheduled to make the remarks at the Royal United Services Institute's annual security lecture.

Fleming will highlight several technologies as examples of the way China is trying to seek leverage at home and abroad.

These include central bank digital currencies, which can allow China to monitor transactions of users.

He will warn the Chinese state is "learning the lessons" from the war in Ukraine and a centralised digital currency can "enable China to partially evade the sort of international sanctions currently being applied to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's regime in Russia".

He will highlight the BeiDou satellite system, which the CCP has "used every lever to force Chinese citizens and businesses to adopt" and exported around the world.

"Many believe that China is building a powerful anti-satellite capability, with a doctrine of denying other nations access to space in the event of a conflict. And there are fears the technology could be used to track individuals," he will say.

In the field of international tech standards, Fleming will cite an example of Chinese industry proposing new principles that will threaten the freedom of the internet by reducing its interoperability and causing fragmentation of systems. He will say the hand of the Chinese state can be detected in moves for a model with greater governmental control, which "threatens human rights by the introduction of new tracking methods".

He will also say that smart cities built around the world by China will, with the wrong technology, have the potential to export surveillance and data.

Fleming will highlight the paradox that Beijing's "great strength combined with fear is driving China into actions that could represent a huge threat to us all".

The world is currently in a "sliding doors moment in history" that "will define our future" and the science and tech community in like-minded countries must act to tackle it, he will say.

"The Chinese leadership believes it draws its strength, its authority, from the closed, one-party system. They seek to secure their advantage through scale and through control. This means they see opportunities to control the Chinese people rather than looking for ways to support and unleash their citizens' potential. They see nations as either potential adversaries or potential client states, to be threatened, bribed, or coerced," he will say.

"The [CCP] has bet their future on this approach, shutting off the many alternative futures for the Chinese people in the process. They hope that future success, based on this system, will be inevitable.

"But underlying that belief is a sense of fear. Fear of its own citizens, of freedom of speech, free trade, open technological standards and alliances – the whole open, democratic order and the international rules-based system. It is no surprise that while the Chinese nation has worked to build its advanced economy, the Party has used its resources to implement draconian national security laws, a surveillance culture, and the increasingly aggressive use of military might."

Fleming will also warn that China is seeking to create "client economies and governments" by exporting technology to countries across the world. He will say these countries risk "mortgaging the future" by buying in Chinese tech with "hidden costs".

He will urge key players in the science and technology community to "recognise that creating an alternative, competitive and compelling offer for technology is an opportunity for the whole of society we can't afford to miss". He will also urge businesses and academia to be alive to the threat and protect their tech systems, their intellectual property and enhance the collective offer from industry to protect and shape technologies to generate compelling alternatives.

The speech comes ahead of the CCP's five-yearly congress, beginning on October 16, which is expected to give President Xi Jinping a third leadership term and cement his place as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.

Concerns about China's manipulation of technology have been growing around the world, including in India.