https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c...name-kgmgrzvl8
China spy suspect is parliamentary aide Chris Cash
A Tory parliamentary researcher arrested on suspicion of spying for China was the director of an influential policy group on Beijing co-founded by the security minister. Chris Cash, 28, was closely linked with Tom Tugendhat and was employed as a researcher by Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the Commons foreign affairs committee.
The suspect is the son of a GP and grew up in a wealthy suburb of Edinburgh. He went to the fee-paying George Watson’s College, where he was a head of house, and later studied history at the University of St Andrews… before spending two years teaching English literature at an international school in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, on a scheme run by the British Council.
He returned to the UK to study for an MSc in China and globalisation at King’s College London before securing employment at Westminster in 2021. He was hired as a researcher for the China Research Group… More recently he was hired as a researcher for Kearns, working inside parliament…..
Luke de Pulford, of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said Cash was a “very serious operator” and a “skilled networker who became very embedded in the Westminster China scene”.…
Cash was also active on Westminster’s social scene. He was photographed at a party at the US embassy in London last year and organised bi-monthly drinks at a pub near parliament for a “Whitehall crowd of quite young people interested in China”. The regular event, known as Westminster China Policy drinks, was popular with young civil servants, political aides, journalists and think tank staffers.
“They used to do a drinks thing, [he] would always be there, there were some young people who worked for the Foreign Office there, Hongkongers . . . it was a lot of young people interested in China,” one of those who attended said. Another guest, who had been invited by Cash, said those attending included young Tory researchers, junior civil servants and American think tank staff…..
China has labelled the arrest a”political farce” and “malicious slander”.
“The claim that China is suspected of ‘stealing British intelligence’ is completely fabricated and nothing but malicious slander,” the Chinese embassy in London said in a statement published late on Sunday.
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We firmly oppose it and urge relevant parties in the UK to stop their anti-China political manipulation and stop putting on such self-staged political farce.”….