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British prosecutors suspected that China’s fifth most senior official was in receipt of intelligence from Westminster in a controversial and now-abandoned espionage case, the Guardian understands.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in April 2024 that a “senior member of the Chinese Communist party and a politburo member” had received “politically sensitive information” from two British researchers who were charged with spying for China.
That person is understood to be Cai Qi, a member of the standing committee of the CCP politburo. The committee is the ruling body of the CCP and is headed by Xi Jinping, China’s all-powerful leader.
Cai, a Xi protege, is the fifth-ranking member of the seven-man committee, making him one of the most powerful men in China. A former party secretary for Beijing, Cai is also a director of the CCP’s general office, making him de facto chief of staff to Xi.
Last month the CPS dropped the charges against Christopher Berry and Christopher Cash, citing a lack of evidence.
But Cai’s identification in the CPS’s case is at the heart of a two-and-a-half-year saga that some MPs claim exposes the risk of Chinese intelligence operations in parliament – but which China experts say reveals a lack of understanding in British institutions about Chinese politics.
The CPS alleged that between December 2021 and February 2023, “a Chinese intelligence agent” commissioned at least 34 reports from Berry, a British researcher living in China.
Those reports contained information from Cash, an acquaintance of Berry’s who was working in Westminster for the China Research Group, a group of Beijing-sceptic Conservative MPs. The CPS believed that information was passed on to Cai, who for most of that period was a member of the 24-person politburo. In October 2022 Cai was promoted to the standing committee.
Cash and Berry have always maintained their innocence. On 15 September, more than two years after they were first arrested, the CPS abandoned the case.
In a letter to the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, the director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, said the “evidence no longer met the evidential test”, which requires a realistic prospect of conviction. Parkinson said that at the time the charging decision was made there had been sufficient evidence. The CPS denied that there had been any political pressure.
Labour and Conservative MPs and Downing Street expressed outrage and disappointment at the decision to drop the case. Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, said he was “very unhappy” about the decision and was considering launching a private action against Cash and Berry.
On Monday the chairs of the home affairs and justice committees wrote to Parkinson asking him to provide further information about why the charges had been dropped. They said the explanation provided so far “falls some way short of the level of detail that is acceptable for a case of this seriousness”.
But the allegation that a Chinese official at the level of Cai was in receipt of what is understood to have been unclassified Westminster gossip from two young researchers with no access to government has been met with scepticism by experts in Chinese politics.
Prof Kerry Brown, the director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, said an official of Cai’s level having a line of contact with a foreigner, even in cases of intelligence gathering, was “very, very, very unlikely”.
Members of the politburo “really aren’t accessible”, Brown said. “Particularly under Xi Jinping, [they] don’t really have any liberty to do anything too entrepreneurial.”
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Brown said the case “raises questions about how British security services assess information in China”.
The government has identified a lack of understanding about China as a challenge to the UK’s national security and plans for economic growth. In June, David Lammy, the then foreign secretary, said a “China audit” of the government’s relationship with China had revealed “a profound lack of confidence in how to deal with China”.
Berry’s lawyer, John Armstrong, said: “Mr Berry does not accept that he met someone of the seniority apparently suggested by the crown.”
Armstrong said there was no proof that Berry had ever met “somebody of marked seniority within the CCP” and the case against him was “highly speculative” and “shouldn’t have been brought”.
He said Berry wrote reports for a commercial client in China and none of the material was classified. Cash’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Prof Steve Tsang, the director of the Soas China Institute, said: “You would expect and hope and pray that the politburo standing committee members have something more serious to do than listening to what the China Research Group has to say.” He said it was not typical for politburo members to have contact with intelligence officers in China.
Tsang said it would be “sheer stupidity” for the UK authorities to prosecute anyone they considered to have a line of contact to the politburo, and instead the intelligence services should try to turn them.
A CPS spokesperson said: “The evidence in this case has been kept under continuous review and it has now been determined that the evidential standard for the offence indicted is no longer met.”
The State Council information office, which handles media queries for the Chinese government, did not respond to a request for comment. The Chinese embassy has called the allegations “entirely fabricated and malicious slander”.
