China suspected of bio-espionage in 'heart of EU'

https://euobserver.com/science/148244

Chinese spies have targeted Belgian biological warfare and vaccine experts, Belgium's security service suspects.

They are also targeting British pharmaceutical giant and vaccine-maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Belgium and Belgian high-tech firms, Belgian intelligence fears.

The suspicions were detailed in confidential Belgian reports dated from 2010 to 2016, seen by EUobserver.

They were meant to alert Belgian authorities to the threat of Chinese military, scientific, and medical espionage.

But the Belgian suspicions have no direct link to the current coronavirus pandemic, which started in China in December 2019 due to natural causes, according to the scientific consensus.

And the reports, which were written by Belgium's homeland security service, the Veiligheid van de Staat (VSSE), nowhere accused China of having a covert biological weapons programme.

For its part, the Chinese EU mission denied any wrongdoing in Belgium and told EUobserver that China always acted "in accordance with local laws".

But one of the confidential Belgian reports, from 2016, said: "This area [biological warfare and vaccines] is of great interest to Chinese [intelligence] services. Both defensively, because China, due to its overpopulation, is very exposed to epidemics, as well as offensively, since it has studied Ebola as an offensive vector".

The VSSE reports were based on multiple human informants.

And Chinese spies were not the only ones who showed "interest" in the subject, they indicated.

Jean-Luc Gala, a top Belgian bioweapons expert, used to have a "suspicious" Russian assistant, the VSSE noted.

"I was as much a target from the US, Russian, Chinese, or even African sides," Martin Zizi, a second Belgian former bioweapons expert, also told this website.