The revelation that Chinese spies are targeting MPs and their parliamentary staff on LinkedIn comes as no surprise to me. As a Chinese political asylum seeker and pro-democracy activist who moved to the UK in 2021, I have been followed by suspected agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), my phone calls have been monitored, and I have been questioned to the point of interrogation by a suspicious Chinese student eager to learn about my life. All of this has happened here in Britain.
The CCP is more prevalent than the public realises. Their agents are embedded across the UK’s institutions and communities, from our universities and businesses to our local governments and healthcare networks. Their objective is simple: to collect information that will benefit the Chinese state and feed it back home.
That can sometimes mean tracking and monitoring dissidents who pose a threat to the Communist Party — people like me. I am training in London to become a lawyer and was granted political asylum in 2023. Ever since relocating here I have spoken against the CCP and in defence of a democratic China. This has come with consequences.
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Less than a fortnight ago, I found myself at Charing Cross police station meeting with two national security officials, one of whom was from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. The other, I believe, worked for MI5. We were there to discuss an incident in May when I and a number of journalists had been followed to the Grafton Arms, in Westminster, by suspected CCP spies after I gave a talk at parliament on transnational oppression — a phenomenon that will be familiar to many of the UK’s estimated 245,000 Chinese-born residents.
It was only as the night was drawing to an end that I noticed him: a young Chinese man, wearing a baseball cap, standing at the bar and staring at my group. I made eye contact and he immediately looked away. That was when I realised he had been sitting in a nearby booth with a Chinese woman, from where they could easily watch us but we couldn’t see them. I was suddenly on edge. During my time in Britain I have developed a sixth sense for interactions like these.
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There was something odd about the couple: they didn’t seem to be talking much to one another, and it felt like they were trying hard to keep a low profile. I pointed the couple out to my friends, and they agreed it was likely they were working for the CCP. Within the hour I had made a report to the police. That same night another member of the group was followed on their way home by an individual that they believed was Chinese.
After an initial interview with police at Brixton police station a week later, I was invited to the Charing Cross branch on Wednesday November 12 to discuss their investigation. Based on their findings, they said it was possible that the two individuals were indeed covert CCP operatives. They noted that the location where the two people positioned themselves was out of sight of the pub’s CCTV, yet afforded them a clear and unobstructed view of our group.
The investigators also determined that the two individuals entered the pub about half an hour after our group arrived. The security officials, who were unable to identify the suspects and said they could not take the case any further, admitted they had not focused enough on the suppression of Chinese citizens in the UK but were beginning to take the issue more seriously.
They went on to ask me about my experiences in the UK, how the Chinese government harasses dissidents, the tactics they deploy and why there have not been more reports of this behaviour in Britain. I told them we were terrified of speaking publicly, and sometimes even privately within our friendship groups, because there were so many CCP spies embedded in British institutions who would report us to the embassy.
Protesters marched in London last weekend to oppose the construction of a Chinese “super” embassy that critics say poses a threat to national security
ANDREA DOMENICONI/SOPA IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK
Since starting my training in London, more and more students and dissidents have told me they’re being targeted. I know of three Chinese students who participated in a large pro-democracy protest outside the embassy in late 2022. They wore face masks throughout, so there was no way of identifying them, but when they later returned to China they were arrested and interrogated about the protest. They contacted me for help. How could the authorities have known? I can only assume a CCP spy close to them was responsible.
As a law student at York University, I had my own run-in with an individual I suspected was feeding intel back to the CCP. After starting my degree in 2021, I joined the Christian Union. On the orientation day, I was approached by a Chinese member who began interrogating me: he wanted to know the name of my home town, the high school I went to, the location of my parents in China, the day I left to come to the UK. I asked my own questions in response but he refused to answer. He grilled other Chinese Christians — but no one else. I reported what had happened to the university, but did not get a response. It was at that moment that I realised British campuses were not safe for Chinese dissidents.
Li is training to be a lawyer
JOSHUA BRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Look at the recent case of Sheffield Hallam. Its staff in China were threatened by Chinese security officials because of the university’s research into human rights abuses in Xinjiang. This research was later dropped. How can something like this be allowed?
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I did not choose this life. It had been my hope to study in the UK and then return to a law firm in China. But as more of my friends have been arrested and disappeared for their activism in China, I came to realise that I cannot go home. To do so would endanger my own life. It takes its toll. I don’t know when I will next see my parents or grandparents, who raised me. I fear they will be punished by the state for my actions and words.
But I have to speak out. I have to keep telling my story and raising awareness of what is happening. Not just for people like myself, but so the British public as a whole can appreciate the growing threat posed by the CCP. The real danger is remaining silent.
As told to Samuel Lovett