Global geopolitics

Leaked defence files show the accused were spreading disinformation against China, not spying for it.

In April 2024 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) charged two British nationals, Christopher Berry (33) and Christopher Cash (30) under the Official Secrets Act 1911, alleging they had provided information “useful to an enemy”,  namely the People’s Republic of China (PRC), between December 2021 and February 2023. (Reuters) The prosecution claimed Berry authored more than 30 reports for a Chinese handler and that Cash, a former parliamentary researcher, supplied content drawn from UK intelligence-adjacent networks. (theguardian.com) On 15 September 2025 the CPS unexpectedly offered no further evidence and dropped the case, stating that “the evidential standard … is no longer met”. (theguardian.com)

The collapse of the case has illuminated three issues of major geopolitical significance: the fragility of Britain’s legal architecture for counter-espionage, the role of political framing in UK-China relations, and the risk of partisan campaign narratives undermining national security processes.

First, the case exposed the constraints of relying on the 1911 Official Secrets Act to prosecute alleged espionage against the PRC. Legal experts pointed out the statute’s requirement that the recipient state must qualify as an “enemy” under its terms. As the DPP Stephen Parkinson admitted, the government was unable to provide a witness statement affirming that China was an “active threat to national security” at the time of the alleged offences. That failure was, he said, “fatal” to the case. (The Independent and The Standard) The consequence is that Britain’s espionage prosecutions remain vulnerable to classification ambiguities and politicised definitions of foreign threats. As one independent commentator noted, “the question of whether China was a threat to national security was the million-dollar question in the case”. (The Independent)

Second, the episode reveals the complex interplay between intelligence, diplomacy and the UK’s China policy. The UK government’s official language at the time of the alleged offences described China as an “epoch-defining challenge” but did not label it an “enemy”. (Reuters) That distinction mattered, because under the 1911 Act the “enemy” designation triggered the offence of supplying material prejudicial to the state. Cut through the legal jargon, the case arguably fell victim to a mismatch between the security community’s threat assessment and the diplomatic apparatus’s framing of the PRC. Independent analysts observed that even though UK intelligence agencies regularly warned of Chinese espionage, the government hesitated to enshrine that threat in court. (theguardian.com) The result is deeper doubt about whether Britain is structurally prepared to prosecute espionage when commercial and state interests with China are also at play.

Third, the matter underscores how anti-China campaigning and media narratives can distort security processes. In the run-up to the charges, Berry and Cash were publicly portrayed in some quarters as “spies for China” and their alleged meetings with high-level Chinese officials were amplified in political discourse. Yet according to a defence report by China expert Kerry Brown, Berry’s own WhatsApp messages reveal his reports were compiled from publicly available UK media, and that he described his aim as running a “UK politics disinformation campaign… to bring about regime collapse” in China. (theguardian.com) Brown also questioned the credibility of the claim that Berry met a senior Chinese leadership figure – noting the alleged meeting took place in Hangzhou while the individual cited was in Beijing. (theguardian.com) These disclosures raise questions about whether the narrative framing of the case was shaped more by political theatre than by rigorous intelligence assessment.

Together these three dimensions deliver several specific conclusions with geopolitical import.

On the intelligence-law interface it is clear that Britain’s prosecutorial regime was unsuited to the modern China challenge. The Official Secrets Act, drafted in the early twentieth century, required the designation of an “enemy” in warfare-style terms. The more recent National Security Act 2023 has broadened offence definitions, but it cannot remedy the failure of this particular case. Prosecutors cited that limitation explicitly when explaining the collapse. (thetimes.co.uk) If Britain is to mount credible espionage prosecutions involving the PRC, it must align legal tools, intelligence thresholds and political classification of adversaries. Without that alignment, high-profile cases will continue to fall at the thresholds.

On the diplomatic-policy front, the case signals that Britain remains cognitively caught between security concerns about China and economic-engagement imperatives. The government’s reluctance to brand China an “enemy” reflected its commercial and diplomatic calculus, but that stance compromised the legal basis for counter-espionage action. As independent observers put it, the decision not to label China formally was a “total roadblock”. (The Independent) This ambiguity will reduce deterrence, because foreign intelligence services assess not only technical risk but also political will. If Britain cannot prosecute alleged espionage for legal reasons, then espionage deterrence is reduced. The speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, warned that Parliament is now vulnerable to foreign actors. (theguardian.com)

Finally, on the narratives-and-campaign side, the episode demonstrates the perils of treating national-security cases as media or political spectacles. The portrayal of Berry and Cash as spies without a trial injected public-discourse pressure into what should have been a strictly legal-intelligence matter. The defence evidence that Berry’s role was not secretive intelligence collection but rather open-source work and trade-reporting should cause a reassessment of how intelligence allegations are publicly conveyed. If political actors or media fixate on a “spy for China” story, they risk undermining the very institutions designed to enforce national-security law. Independent commentators have warned that the collapse of the case “creates a dangerous precedent” and damages credibility in the UK’s counter-espionage posture. (The Observer)

The broader geopolitical implication is that Britain’s China policy may now be at a crossroads. If London tilts too far toward commercial engagement without credible enforcement of security barriers, it may signal to Beijing that British counter-intelligence risk is low. If, instead, Britain overcorrects and treats all Sino-UK interactions as adversarial espionage, it may damage trade and diplomacy. The aborted Berry/Cash case reflects precisely this tension. It underlines that effective China policy must integrate intelligence, law, diplomacy and public communication into a coherent whole rather than allow each to operate in isolation.

In practical terms the UK government should undertake at least three corrective steps. First, publish the full rationale and legal advice behind the decision to drop the case, to rebuild public trust and deterrence credibility. Second, review and update the legal architecture for espionage prosecutions so it aligns with the China threat profile, ensuring that “enemy”-type language and classifications no longer provide legal escape routes. Third, reinforce parliamentary and institutional protections against foreign interference, beyond headline prosecutions, including vetting, staff security, and transparency of think-tank foreign-funding links.

In conclusion, the Berry/Cash affair cannot simply be written off as a prosecutorial mis-step or an embarrassment. It reveals structural weaknesses in the UK’s security-legal ecosystem, strategic confusion in relation to China, and the cost of marrying national-security matters to political narrative campaigns. Unless those deficits are addressed, the UK will struggle to respond credibly to modern espionage threats from Beijing and similar state actors.

Authored By: Global Geopolitics

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