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Vanessa Cai

China’s counter-espionage agency has caught a foreign spy trying to take photos of military facilities off the country’s coast, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday.
The spy and an assistant posed as tourists to visit an island to gather intelligence on sensitive military facilities, the report said, citing security authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
The authorities had been tipped off that foreign intelligence agencies planned to send spies to the island and intervened, confiscating several SD memory cards that contained photos of military sites and sensitive areas.
The Ministry of State Security’s Zhejiang branch said the two first took a taxi to tour local attractions but then headed to areas near the military zones.
“We observed the vehicle making several rounds on the island. When approaching the military areas, they slowed down, rolled down the windows, and took note of the location and features of the targets,” the report quoted an officer as saying.
The spy and his assistant had “faced legal consequences”, CCTV said, without saying or where the incident took place.
Zhejiang province faces the East China Sea, and hosts one of the major naval bases of the Chinese military’s East Sea Fleet.


Since launching a social media account in August, 2023, the ministry has warned frequently about what it says are threats to national security, often highlighting risks related to leaking military secrets.
In December 2023, the ministry said it detected a foreign company trying to gather intelligence from a naval base in an unidentified coastal city. As with this week’s case, it did not say when the alleged incident happened or which country had sent the spies. It also did not say if any arrests had been made.
The ministry has also warned military enthusiasts not to photograph classified equipment, saying the images could potentially expose technical details and progress in military equipment, and be used by “hostile foreign forces” to analyse combat effectiveness.
They could also put defence planning at risk by revealing key information such as the location of deployments and frequency of use of the military equipment, it said.
In 2021, a man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for illegally obtaining state secrets after taking photos of a sensitive military nature near a dual-use airport in Jiaxing in Zhejiang.
The same year, a military enthusiast was sentenced to one year in prison on multiple charges of illegally obtaining state secrets after secretly photographing the Fujian aircraft carrier with a remote high-definition camera well before its official launch in June 2022.


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News

China

Military

Politics

The overseas operative and an assistant intended to gather intelligence on coastal facilities, state broadcaster reports


The overseas operative and an assistant intended to gather intelligence on coastal facilities, state broadcaster reports.


Defence

China’s military