The British government is anticipated to publicly link China to cyberattacks which have affected the voting records of tens of hundreds of thousands of people, marking one other significant hardening of Britain’s stance towards China since its leaders announced “golden era” in UK-China relations almost a decade ago.
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden will make a statement on the matter in Parliament on Monday afternoon and is expected to announce sanctions against state-linked individuals and entities involved in the attacks.
The government revealed attack on the Electoral Commission last year, but did not identify those behind it. It is believed to have started in 2021 and lasted for several months, during which the personal information of 40 million voters was hacked.
The Electoral Commission, which oversees UK elections, said the names and addresses of everyone registered to vote in Great Britain and Northern Ireland between 2014 and 2022, as well as overseas voters, were accessed.
The commission has previously found that data contained in voter registers is limited and noted that much of it is already in the public domain. But he added that it is possible to combine the data “with other data in the general public domain, akin to that which individuals decide to share, with a view to infer patterns of behavior or discover and profile individuals.”
In addition to infiltrating the Electoral Commission, Dowden is expected to confirm that the Chinese attacked several members of parliament while making hawkish statements about China. These include Iain Duncan-Smith, former leader of the Conservative Party; Tim Loughton, former Conservative education minister; and Stewart McDonald, a member of the Scottish National Party.
In remarks to reporters ahead of the announcement, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “We have sent very clearly that the present situation is one of China behaving in an increasingly assertive manner abroad, authoritarian at home, which is an era-defining challenge in addition to the best state threat to our economic security.”
“So it is right that we take measures to protect ourselves and that is what we are doing,” Mr Sunak added.
Tensions between the UK and China have increased lately over human rights concerns and Chinese threats to British security. Under pressure from the United States, Britain announced plans in 2020 to limit the role of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in its 5G network.
Britain then condemned a brand new national security law in Hong Kong, a former British colony, saying it violated the terms of London’s transfer of power agreement with Beijing. The government has granted visas to around 350,000 Hong Kong residents with British overseas passports, and by 2023 around 160,000 have moved.
In September, police arrested a 28-year-old British scientist in parliament on suspicion of working for the Chinese government. The man, who has denied being a spy, has worked with outstanding lawmakers, including Tom Tugendhat, now the federal government’s security minister, on China policy, raising fears of possible security breaches.
The researcher’s arrest, which was deemed unrelated to the cyberattacks, deepened a split within the ruling Conservative Party over how London should engage with an increasingly assertive Beijing.
The current foreign secretary, David Cameron, was prime minister at a time when Britain was strengthening its trading relationship with China. At a press conference with President Xi Jinping in 2015, he welcomed the start of a “golden era in relations between the UK and China”.
Cameron, who has since toughened his approach to China, is anticipated to temporary Conservative members of parliament on the allegations on Monday.
On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian dismissed reports of Chinese hacking as “fake news.”
“When investigating and determining the nature of cyber incidents, there must be adequate objective evidence,” Lin said, “so as not to denigrate other countries without a fact-based basis, let alone politicize cybersecurity issues.”
Christopher Buckley reporting contributed.