BOB SEELY: Prince Andrew has been a 'useful idiot' for China and its vast network of spies. And the worst part? He's not the only one...
The hidden agents of China’s United Front – and there are dozens, possibly hundreds of them operating in Britain – are not spies in the sense of a James Bond film or even a John le Carre novel.
Their role is far more subtle but equally dangerous to Britain’s long-term, national security. They inhabit a grey area of espionage, where infiltration and influence peddling are as important as information collecting.
To understand the risk they present, we have to grasp not only what Beijing wants from the West, but how the Chinese government controls its citizens’ lives. China is a Communist, one-party state with a mindset very different from our own.
China is at war with the West – not openly as is increasingly the case with Russia, but in a more subtle, non-military struggle for control of the future. It constantly works to undermine Western power and cohesion and increase its own.
President Xi Jinping and Prince Andrew meet in Shanghai in 2018
President Xi Jinping, the leader of a dictatorship with ever-tighter control over 1.4billion people, wants to dominate the world’s future key industries, from solar panels to genomics, mobile communications to medicines – and the raw materials needed to sustain them.
Above all, Xi wants Britain and other nations to be so dependent on China that our ties with the US are loosened. His strategy is that, if war ever comes to the Pacific, the UK and the rest of Europe will be forced to remain neutral or face economic devastation. Such an event would break the already fragile unity of the Western alliance.
This slow strategy of influence developing has been so effective over the past decade that many people in positions of power have been wilfully blind to it.
Prince Andrew, who is most recently thought to have become embroiled in this web, is far from alone in being one of Beijing’s so-called ‘useful idiots’.
But the United Front – or, to give its full name, the United Front Work Department – is not a new phenomenon. Set up in the wake of the Chinese Revolution in the late 1940s, it was once referred to by the supreme leader Mao as one of his ‘secret weapons’. Originally an internal agency ferreting out dissidents, it has turned international in the 21st century.
Farcically, although the identity of the alleged agent who befriended Prince Andrew is widely known, a court ruling means he must be referred to as H6. It is not known whether this man arrived in the UK as a United Front operative but, once he became friendly with the King’s brother, it is inconceivable that he was operating independently.
Beijing would control his key interactions and expect to be informed of every scrap of information he obtained.
But this wasn’t a straightforward spying ploy. H6 was exerting Beijing’s influence, spreading the approved Chinese messages and demonstrating how trusted Chinese business was by those at the heart of the UK establishment.
I've spoken to former personnel from both MI6 and MI5 who say they were deeply concerned about China’s malign influence
Through Andrew, H6 was introduced to prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May, and proudly displayed photos on his desk of himself with them.
This was a colossal win for China on every level – as propaganda, as espionage, as a tactic to inflict embarrassment on our government. Every MP worth their salt should be willing to stand up in the Commons and name him as a warning to other such agents of influence doing the Communist Party’s bidding.
I’ve spoken to former personnel from both MI6 and MI5 who say they were deeply concerned about China’s malign influence but felt unable to raise the alarm because our political leaders didn’t want to know. Especially during the ‘golden age of friendship’ with China, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) built up its spy network in our nation, we appeared to do little to challenge or question it.
That made us vulnerable. For instance, a Chinese interpreter for the Foreign Office, Chen Shirong, was able to run a website promoting the aims of the Party while also attending high-profile state occasions – working for the CCP in plain sight.
When I was an MP and spoke out, along with Sir Iain Duncan Smith and others, against allowing the Chinese tech company Huawei to dominate the UK’s 5G network, we were told in Parliament that handing China control of our airwaves did not constitute a security threat, because Huawei was a private company that had no state affiliations.
Have we forgotten how Communist states operate? All so-called private companies in China do the bidding of the state if the state commands it.
So many of the security reassurances given to us turned out to be little more than fig leaf excuses for a policy of economic and security appeasement. I was left staggered how we had come to this sorry state. Thankfully, we blocked Huawei – at least for the moment.
There is a struggle for the future of humanity, and it is happening now.
We need to face this fact and understand we cannot just separate trade from other aspects of our relations with China. We need a comprehensive strategy. We do not have one. We need to get wise to what is happening.
By ignoring the presence of United Front agents in the heart of the business world and the British establishment, we are doing the work of China’s Communist bosses for them.
- Dr Bob Seely is a military and security expert and author of The Return of Total War, to be published by Biteback in the spring
