Going by what the director general of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has said on record, sensitive technology makes Britain an attractive proposition for hacking and cyber theft. It is also possible that China is interested in obtaining political and economic intelligence though the utility and relevance of such intelligence is doubtful after the hammering the Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair had received over the Iraq war.

Interestingly, the news about ‘cyber war’ has hit the headlines when Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier is visiting the British shores.  ‘Although the Cold War is long over, MI5 is left tackling a constant threat from Chinese espionage’, wrote Duncan Gardham in his June 24 dispatch to The Telegraph. He is the Security Correspondent of the daily and as such what he says deserves to be taken with some seriousness though not as gospel truth.  This caveat is essential because he says MI5 believes that the Chinese government ‘represents one of the most significant espionage threats to the UK’.

Access to and surfing of the Internet is not a ‘free market’ enterprise in China notwithstanding the presence of an estimated 450 million  plus netizens in the country. So, the conclusion that pops up is that hacking in and from China is not a free enterprise. Chinese hackers have been making constant attempts to break into government departments and private sector companies, says Britain’s Office of Cyber Security and the Cyber Security Operations Centre. Such hacking cannot be the handiwork of academics and enterprising students though it is possible that they spearheaded the enterprise when China was on the learning curve.

MI5’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) has traced a ‘concerted hacking campaign’ from China last year. Duncan Gardham reports that MI5 has since prepared a 14-page ‘restricted’ report and the document describes how China attacked British defence, energy, communications and manufacturing companies in a concerted hacking campaign.

Does this mean in the computer age, bugs and honey traps are passé. No such luck as yet to the naïve at high places. Three years ago, an aide of Gordon Brown (British Prime Minister, 27 June 2007 – 11 May 2010) was caught in a ‘honey trap’ while on a visit to Shanghai. Westerners visiting China are routinely warned by their foreign offices of likely bugs in hotel rooms.  Room searches, when the guest is out, are also fairly common.

Apparently the Chinese believe that a booming economy deserves a robust intelligence – human and technical for data and analysis. Otherwise ‘spy schools’ that attract 30 to 50 best brains would not be the flavour of the season at the Chinese Universities in Beijing, Shanghai (Fudan University), Xian, Qingdao and Harbin in 2011.

Early this month (June), China opened its eighth National Intelligence College on the campus of Hunan University in the central city of Changsha. The first Intelligence College opened at Nanjing in 2008 and the second came up last year in Guangdong province, which is being developed as the new magnet for FDI and American OEMs.

All this cause for concern? Not necessarily, even as The Economist writes that China has plans of “winning informationised wars by the mid-21st century”. Because today’s world is a globalised village without boundaries as the housing bubble bursts have shown.

– M RAMA RAO