Chinese police ‘routinely spy on UK visitors’

BRITISH officials are routinely being spied on by China when they travel to the country on business, it was claimed last night. Businessmen, doctors and teachers are also among more than 100 Britons whose details are on a Chinese police security watchlist, according to a leaked database.

Information recorded on the individuals includes dates of birth, passport numbers and their points of entry and exit.

Those on the database include Margaret Johnson OBE, head of an advertising agency with an office in Shanghai, an Army officer and two Virgin Atlantic pilots. The list also includes 7,600 Uighur Muslims in Shanghai, who are marked as ‘terrorists’, the Daily Telegraph reported.

MI5 is investigating the files, which have emerged amid escalating tensions between the UK and China over human rights abuses of the Uighur minority.

The data seen by analysts was stored on servers at the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai and was largely collected in 2016. The bureau reports to Beijing.

Cyber security consultancy Internet 2.0, which obtained the databases, said: ‘The system gives us new insight into how China tracks dissidents and seeks to exploit data on foreign entries and companies.’

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said recording dates of birth, passport numbers and points of exit and entry was ‘common international practice’. n The BBC’s China correspondent John Sudworth has been forced to flee to Taiwan with his family after ‘threats’ from the authorities over his reports on human rights abuses and the Covid pandemic.