China “will use electric cars to spy on Britain”, according to a headline in Britain’s The Telegraph on Aug 5. Similar reports also appeared in other British newspapers, all quoting government sources. It seems that despite recent encouraging moves to improve Sino-British relations, government paranoia about China is still alive and well.
According to the Telegraph report, British ministers have warned that imports of electric cars from China “will enable Beijing to spy on British citizens”. The article goes on to say that “China is predicted to dominate the UK market because of its prowess in providing cheap electric cars.” It then references unnamed sources “at the heart of government” who “have raised concerns that technology embedded in the vehicles could be used to harvest huge amounts of information, including location data, audio recordings and video footage”.
After reading this, I immediately checked the date of the article, wondering whether it was a reprint from the April 1 edition; but no, this wasn’t the sort of joke known as an April Fool that’s traditional in Britain on the first of that month. Are we really expected to believe that Beijing is interested in listening to all the mundane conversations, squabbles, romances and children’s chatter that go on in the millions of vehicles on British roads, in the vague hope of catching a fragment of intelligence that may or may not be useful, relevant, or even accurate? If Chinese agents have nothing better to do than eavesdrop on random British car conversations, then the West has absolutely nothing to fear from them.
So what is the background to this type of government spy paranoia and media interest? We all know that in the West, spying is part of popular culture, and that a good spy story will always attract readers. The electric-car spy story is only the latest in a string of headlines about alleged Chinese spying ingenuity. Other media stories in the past year have included accusations about Chinese spy balloons, streetlights, televisions, cameras, drones, telecom equipment, and even (don’t laugh) refrigerators. Is the West simply suffering from a bad case of paranoia, or has the popularity of James Bond morphed fact and fiction so that the two are now indistinguishable?
It’s certainly undeniable that spying goes on all around the world. Indeed, it is as old as civilization itself. In the fifth century BC, in his military text The Art of War, the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote: “Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men; hence the use of spies.” In addition to Imperial China, spy networks were also well-established in Ancient Egypt and in the Greek, Roman and Mongol empires. Indeed, throughout history, espionage has been an integral part of international relations, defense and diplomacy. All countries do it; all countries need to know about potential threats from potential enemies.
The latest British claims about Chinese electric-car espionage are straight out of the anti-China playbook and are so ridiculous that even a James Bond movie wouldn’t come up with such a nonsensical plot
One of the most famous early English spymasters was Sir Francis Walsingham, the principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I. His sophisticated network of secret agents across Europe was a model of espionage that was rapidly copied by other European powers in the second half of the 16th century. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars at the start of the 19th century, public awareness and fear of foreign spies was endemic. According to legend, this led to a strange incident in Hartlepool in northeast England, where local people are said to have hanged a shipwrecked monkey, believing him to have been a French spy.
In the 20th century, espionage played a key role in both world wars, with all participants perfecting sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems. This was reflected in popular culture, with spy novels emerging as an era-defining genre. Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907) and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) were early classics. As the century wore on and Cold War espionage between the West and Soviet Russia took center stage, spy novels proliferated. Ian Fleming’s James Bond became the archetypal spy hero, with Fleming’s 12 Bond novels, two short-story collections, and the subsequent movie franchise putting Cold War espionage front and center in the West’s psyche. Other influential novels in the genre included works by Graham Greene (The Quiet American), John Le Carre (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), and Len Deighton (The Ipcress File).
In America, spying had previously played an important role in both the Revolutionary War (1775-83) and the US Civil War (1861-65), but it was not until the second half of the 20th century that the US became a world leader in espionage and counterespionage techniques. Inspired not by James Bond but by the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, the US rapidly became the world’s most sophisticated spying machine. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established in 1947. Its mission then, as now, was to strengthen America’s defense and security by gaining as much intelligence as possible about the actions, facilities and intentions of potential adversaries. In other words, along with the rest of the world, the US has followed the ancient advice and wisdom of Sun Tzu.
In short, all of the world’s secret agencies are involved in espionage. As Sun Tzu pointed out, it would be irresponsible not to do so. Indeed, it can be argued that espionage helps preserve peace in the world. After all, the more information that governments have about the military capabilities of other countries and their allies, the less likely they are to risk attacking those countries. In this context, Vladimir Putin must be wishing that his secret agents had done a better job in reporting to him not only the military preparedness of Ukraine but also the willingness of Western governments to support Ukrainian forces. Had Russian espionage been more effective, the present conflict could well have been avoided.
Of course, the importance of spying in international relations will never be acknowledged. Governments will never want to admit to covert operations, despite the operations’ critical importance to security. Equally, whenever governments claim that other countries are spying on them, they and the media get wildly excited. The country allegedly being spied upon denounces the offending actions as an outrage, despite the fact that they are doing exactly the same thing to the offending country. This is pure hypocrisy, but is all part of a well-understood and secretive game.
However, accusations about spying really need to be credible if the accusers aren’t to become a laughingstock. The latest British claims about Chinese electric-car espionage are straight out of the anti-China playbook and are so ridiculous that even a James Bond movie wouldn’t come up with such a nonsensical plot.
There’s a popular children’s game called “I spy”, in which you have to guess something beginning with a certain letter. If you really are deluded enough to believe in Chinese electric car espionage, this is a perfect game for car travel: “I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘P’.” The answer, of course, is “paranoia”.
The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
