According to a report by the British Evening Standard on the 30th, the three intelligence agencies of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ will start a recruitment project specifically for Mandarin linguists, with the purpose of fighting against “Chinese Intelligence threats”.
British “Evening Standard”: Intelligence agencies recruit Mandarin-speaking people to respond to Chinese spy threats
According to the report, this recruitment has been published on the GCHQ website, and the public job location is London or Cheltenham.
The latter is the location of GCHQ’s monitoring center. Applicants need to undergo strict security review.
The job description read: “Putonghua experts need to use language knowledge for precise analysis and insight into the truth of intelligence. They are the core of intelligence investigations and play an active role in guiding projects and promoting investigations.”
The Evening Standard said as the largest in the UK One of the employers of language experts, GCHQ employees work in 42 languages, including Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Urdu, etc.
Its principal, Jeremy Fleming, recently stated publicly that dealing with China is somewhat complicated, because China is both an intelligence rival and an economic partner.
The Evening Standard stated that China’s intelligence activities have developed on a large scale, but the UK is “far away.”
Therefore, in addition to recruiting multilingual professionals, British intelligence agencies will also carry out technological updates, develop more mature espionage methods, and cooperate with the “Five Eyes Alliance” countries and the European Union to fight against intelligence opponents.
The head of the British intelligence agency has recently made many “China threats” remarks. Ken McCallum, Director of MI5, recently stated that more actions will be taken to counter the Chinese spy threat.
The spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in the UK said that China is concerned and opposed to the British National Security Agency’s interpreting China as a national security challenge and misinterpreting China’s development.
Political mutual trust is the foundation for the development of relations between countries. China regards Britain as a partner and is committed to developing healthy and stable China-UK relations on the basis of mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win results.
It is hoped that relevant British officials will abandon the “Cold War mentality”, take a comprehensive and objective view of China’s development, and regard China as an opportunity and partner, rather than a threat and adversary, so as to avoid further damage to China-UK relations.
