China is using its financial and scientific power to manipulate technology in a way that threatens global security, Britain’s top cyber spy said on Tuesday, warning that Beijing’s moves could pose a “huge threat to us all”. In a speech, Jeremy Fleming, director of the spy agency GCHQ, will say that China’s leadership has sought to use technology such as digital currencies and its Beidou satellite navigation network to strengthen its control over its citizens at home, while expanding its influence abroad.
“They are trying to secure their advantage through scale and control,” Fleming said at an annual security lecture at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, according to excerpts released by his office. “This means they see opportunities to control the Chinese people instead of looking for ways to support and unleash the potential of their citizens. They see nations as either potential adversaries or potential client states to be threatened, bribed, or coerced.”
The remarks are Fleming’s latest public warning about Beijing’s behavior and aspirations. Last year, he said the West faced a battle to ensure China did not dominate important emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics. Fleming will say that China’s leadership was driven by fear for its own citizens, for freedom of speech, for free trade and open technology standards and alliances, “the whole open, democratic order and system based on international rules”.
That fear, combined with China’s power, has driven it “to take actions that could pose a huge threat to all of us,” he says. China has previously called similar accusations by Western governments groundless and politically motivated slander. Fleming also highlights technologies where he says China is trying to gain leverage, such as the development of a centralized digital currency that would allow it to track user transactions and potentially avoid sanctions that Russia has faced since its invasion of Ukraine.
He will also point to Beidou, China’s answer to America’s GPS navigation system. “Many people believe that China is building a strong anti-satellite capability with the doctrine of denying other nations access to space in the event of a conflict,” he says. “And there are concerns that this technology could be used to track individuals.”
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