(MENAFN- Live Mint) The head of MI5, the UK's domestic security service, revealed that its spies had disrupted a new threat from China in recent days, as he expressed frustration over the collapse of a espionage case linked to Beijing.

“We've intervened operationally again just in the last week,” MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum told reporters on Thursday, declining to elaborate on the nature of the activity.“Do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat? The answer is: Of course, yes, they do - every day.”

Chinese spying in Britain has come under greater scrutiny in the wake of prosecutors' decision to drop a case against two men accused of trying to gather intelligence about the country's policy toward Beijing. The Crown Prosecution Service has said it abandoned the case because the government had not met the threshold of designating China as a national security threat.

The suspects have denied the allegations.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has redirected blame toward the prosecutors and the Conservative government that was in power when the charges were first brought. On Wednesday, he released witness statements by Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins showing that he described the activity in the case as representing an“active espionage threat.”

“Of course, I am frustrated when opportunities to prosecute national security-threatening activity are not followed through,” McCallum told reporters.“My teams have every right to feel proud of the detection and disruption job they have done in this case.”

While McCallum declined to comment on Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson's handling of the case, he backed Collins.“I do consider him to be a man of high integrity and a professional of considerable quality,” McCallum said.

Earlier this week, MI5 warned politicians and their staff that they were being targeted by spies from China, Russia and Iran in efforts to undermine British democracy. The new guidance sought to help people working in British government counter“espionage and foreign interference.”

Separately, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Chinese state actors had accessed classified UK computer systems for more than a decade, obtaining low- and medium-level confidential information for at least the last 10 years, according to people familiar with the matter.

McCallum confirmed that there was a constant and ongoing cyberthreat to government networks from China and other countries. He endorsed a statement by former National Cyber Security Centre chief Ciaran Martin to Bloomberg that“highly classified state secrets” hadn't been accessed by China.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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