A British man accused of spying for China has told the BBC that he was a “convenient scapegoat” for British police and security services, who wanted to put the threat of foreign espionage “on the map”.
Chris Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, has shared more than 6,000 messages revealing how a Chinese official sought information on sensitive political issues in the United Kingdom – including the 2022 Conservative Party leadership contest to determine who would become the next prime minister.
The messages show how Cash’s friend in China, Chris Berry, with whom he shared information, dramatically described a “secret” meeting between himself and a senior Chinese official.
Berry said he had been told that China was concerned about the possibility of a British MP, who was under Chinese sanctions, being promoted to a Cabinet position.
The messages also reveal that Cash used his friend as a reference during the vetting process for obtaining a parliamentary access pass – an application that was approved.
Like Cash, Berry was also charged with espionage. Both men have consistently denied any wrongdoing.
In his first interview since being acquitted, a verdict that triggered a political row over the government’s failure to classify China as a “threat”, Cash said he would “never do anything” to undermine the United Kingdom’s national security.
However, he admitted that sending his friend messages containing “gossip” was “unprofessional and naive”. The two had met in 2018 while teaching English at a school in China.
Although the large volume of messages shows that Cash discussed sensitive subjects, there is no evidence in them that he was paid by the Chinese Communist Party or sympathised with it.
Given that the British government had previously warned that Chinese spies were targeting officials in the political, defence and business sectors through increasingly sophisticated espionage operations, Cash believes his case was pursued as a warning to others.
Berry declined to comment for the article. However, when he was acquitted, he denied any wrongdoing and said he had been subjected to an “unfair trial by media”.
He said he had prepared reports for a Chinese company that he believed had clients seeking to develop commercial ties with the United Kingdom. According to Berry, the reports contained no classified information and were based on publicly available sources.
Cash returned to the United Kingdom in 2019. In his resignation message from his job in China, he wrote that he felt “guilty about sitting on the sidelines and participating in a system I am uncomfortable with”.
He later became director of a small policy group run by Conservative MPs in Westminster who were sceptical of China.
Berry, meanwhile, remained in China, where he wrote reports for a major consulting firm which, like many Chinese companies, has links to the government.
British security services alleged that information contained in messages exchanged by the two men through the encrypted messaging app Signal, between January 2022 and March 2023, had been passed on to individuals linked to the Chinese state.
The most senior prosecutor in England and Wales said the case collapsed last autumn because government officials could not state that China had been designated an “enemy” at the time.
This triggered accusations that the British government had politically interfered in the case in an effort to avoid upsetting the Chinese government.
China has previously dismissed espionage allegations as “pure fabrication and malicious slander”.
