Secret services seek Mandarin speakers to spy on China

MI5 and MI6 are advertising for Mandarin speakers to help Britain’s security services spy on China.

A recruitment campaign on the MI5 website hopes to attract linguists for all three intelligence agencies.

MI5, MI6 and Britain’s cyber spy agency GCHQ have all increased their focus on Chinese espionage activity in recent years.

The advert says that applicants’ language skills could have come from “growing up in a multilingual family, from living or working abroad, or from studying Mandarin to a high level”.

“Along with other key skills, candidates for the Mandarin Language Intelligence Analyst role need to be able to demonstrate judgment, language proficiency and cultural knowledge,” the advert says. The MI5 website contains an audio link for prospective candidates to test their Mandarin skills.

Earlier this month Ken Mccallum,

While Russia might provide ‘bursts of bad weather’, Chinese spies are ‘changing the climate’

the recently appointed head of MI5, said China was one of many increasing threats to the UK.

“In the 2020s, one of the toughest challenges facing MI5 and indeed government is that the differing national security challenges presented by Russian, Chinese, Iranian and other actors are growing in severity and in complexity, while terrorist threats persist at scale,” he said.

Mr Mccallum said that, while Russia might provide “bursts of bad weather” in terms of espionage activity against Britain, Chinese spies were “changing the climate”.

While Britain should view China as a “careful balance of opportunities and challenges”, Mr Mccallum, 46, said the UK was currently constrained by legislation. China has become more militarily assertive in recent years as the country’s economy has grown.

Although military confrontation is not expected in the near future, China is increasingly considered to be using espionage to steal state and industrial secrets, as well as making it harder to express political opposition to the oneparty state.

This year Britain ejected the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei from any role in the UK’S future 5G infrastructure, citing security fears. Huawei has until 2027 to remove all equipment from existing 3G and 4G networks.