Four people were detained in Germany late last month on suspicion of spying for China. At the same time, two people were charged in the UK for related crimes. China has dismissed the detective says, labelling them misleading and “malicious”.
According to China’s legal laws, whoever” steals, spies on, buys, or unjustly supplies state secrets or intelligence for an international body, organisation or specific” can experience life imprisonment.
State employees who “intentionally or carelessly divulge state strategies” may be sentenced to up to seven years in prison, SCMP reported.
Since the introduction of the law in 1988, “dozens of individuals” had been detained in China on charges relating to state secrets, according to an Amnesty International statement from 2021.
Bai Weiji and Zhao Lei, both from China, received sentences in 1993 for “providing state tricks to a stranger” and 10 years and 6 years in prison, both.
Bai was accused of handing over confidential information to the Beijing editor for the Washington Post, and his family was accused of doing so.
In 2006, Lu Jianhua, a Taiwanese sociology with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was sentenced behind closed doors to 20 years in jail for leaking state secrets.
Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong journalist who was The Straits Times ‘ main China editor at the time, had a connection to his situation.
Lu was accused of publishing content for Ching that contained” top state techniques.” Before his launch in 2008, Chen was detained in 2005 and given a five-year prison sentence for spying.
Ching published a guide in 2013 recounting his confinement, titled My 1, 000 Time Ordeal: A Patriot’s Torture.
Former Straits Times director Leslie Fong, who was his quick officer when he was arrested, stated in an article about the publication of the book:” We do not acknowledge or accept the spy cost levelled at him.
Most recently,  , Taiwanese government claimed in January to have detained an entity alleged to be spying for Britain’s foreign intelligence services. Authorities did not specify whether this is protected by the state strategies or anti-espionage rules.
Last October, it , arrested a Japanese merchant who had been detained earlier on suspicion of spying. According to an Asahi Shimbun report, Beijing has detained 17 Chinese nationals since 2015 on suspicion of spying and other crimes related to regional stability.