China detains a person it accuses of collecting state secrets for Britain

BEIJING —  China said Monday that it has detained a person accused of collecting state secrets on behalf of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6.

The Chinese Ministry of State Security said on social media that Britain had been working since 2015 with the accused person, who is a citizen of a third nation and has the surname Huang.

The ministry said Huang had received training in intelligence-gathering, was provided with equipment and had collected numerous state secrets on repeated visits to China. No further information on the intelligence gathered was given, nor did the ministry say when Huang was detained or where he or she is being held.

The definition of state secrets is not clearly defined under China’s opaque political and legal system, and many consulting and advisory firms have been investigated for obtaining data that would ordinarily be in the public record, particularly if they were shared with foreign entities.

The British government has yet to comment on the allegations, but they follow a deterioration of relations between Beijing and London sparked in part by British opposition to Chinese investments in the U.K., especially in the power and communications industries, where China’s ruling Communist Party exercises strong influence.

London has also been highly critical of China’s curtailment of political rights in former British colony Hong Kong, where violent anti-government protests in 2019 were met with Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law and electoral changes. Those have largely eliminated any political opposition to Beijing’s decrees and silenced freedom of speech in what had been one of Asia’s most dynamic societies and a major financial center.