{"id":74577,"date":"2025-10-02T16:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/02\/uk-cps-china-official-intelligence-westminster-spy-case"},"modified":"2025-10-02T16:00:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:00:43","slug":"chinas-fifth-ranking-official-was-suspect-in-dropped-westminster-spy-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=74577","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s fifth-ranking official was suspect in dropped Westminster spy case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Person who was thought to have received intelligence is understood to be Cai Qi, de facto chief of staff to Xi Jinping<\/p>\n<p>British prosecutors suspected that China\u2019s fifth most senior official was in receipt of intelligence from Westminster in a controversial and now-abandoned espionage case, the Guardian understands.<\/p>\n<p>The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said in April 2024 that a \u201csenior member of the Chinese Communist party and a politburo member\u201d had received \u201cpolitically sensitive information\u201d from two British researchers who were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2025\/sep\/20\/collapse-uk-spy-trial-china-christopher-cash-christopher-berry\">charged with spying for China<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/oct\/02\/uk-cps-china-official-intelligence-westminster-spy-case\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Person who was thought to have received intelligence is understood to be Cai Qi, de facto chief of staff to Xi JinpingBritish prosecutors suspected that China\u2019s fifth most senior official was in receipt of intelligence from Westminster in a controversi&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50,3411,667,4,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-crown-prosecution-service","category-espionage","category-politics","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74578,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74577\/revisions\/74578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}