It added that targets would “typically be approached to work as freelance consultants authoring geopolitical reports.” Chinese intelligence officers had “a low threshold for what information is considered to be of value,” it said, but “individual pieces of information fit into a wider collection effort.”A statement posted to the website of the Chinese Embassy in London on Tuesday said: “These claims by the U.K. side are pure fabrication and malicious slander. We strongly condemn such despicable moves of the U.K. side and have lodged stern representations with them.”Last month, Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, said in a speech that China was engaging in cyberespionage and the theft of advanced secrets, and had conducted “efforts to interfere covertly in U.K. public life.”The alert sent to members of Parliament on Tuesday had the potential to revive the political debate over the case dropped in September. The decision not to bring the case to trial roiled politics in London for weeks. Senior members of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government have repeatedly said that it was the decision of Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, to drop the case against Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher. Mr. Parkinson said that the government’s unwillingness to call China a threat at the time the pair were detained meant he could not charge them under the Official Secrets Act.
