Beyond stealing technology, China is now also making moves to protect its economy from any future sanctions if it tries to seize Taiwan by force, drawing lessons from Western efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine , Wray said. “We’ve seen China look for ways to insulate its economy against potential sanctions, trying to insulate itself from damage if it does something to draw the ire of the international community,” Rey said. “In our world, we call this kind of behavior cueing.” He cited recent estimates from a Yale University study that Western businesses have lost $59 billion as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. “And if China invades Taiwan,” Wray said, “we could see the same thing again, on a much larger scale.” McCallum drew attention to the fact that Wednesday’s event was the first time the leaders of the FBI and MI5 had held a joint public event. The two agencies have close links, with MI5 officers working in the FBI and FBI agents in MI5. Businesses and universities have for decades sought access to the growing Chinese market as a way to expand their businesses. But the risk has also increased. “The widely held Western assumption that growing prosperity within China and increasing connectivity with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has been proven completely wrong,” McCallum said. “But the Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic systems, our media and our legal systems. Not to imitate them, unfortunately, but to use them for their own gain.” Wray cited recent FBI investigations into Chinese intelligence activity, including an attempt to target a US congressional candidate in New York for ties to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that were crushed by the Chinese military. He said the FBI had also caught people working for Chinese companies trying to dig up fields in rural US areas to try to gain access to genetically modified seeds. McCallum said MI-5 is now carrying out seven times more investigations than it did in 2018 into Chinese activity in the UK.
