Germany accuses China of industrial espionage

Germany is under attack from an increasing number of state-backed Chinese spying operations that are costing the German economy tens of billions of euros a year, a leading intelligence agent said.

Walter Opfermann, an espionage protection expert in the office for counter-intelligence for the state of Baden-Württemberg, said that China was using an array of “polished methods” from old-fashioned spies to phone-tapping, and increasingly the internet, to steal industrial secrets.

He said methods had become “extremely sophisticated” to the extent that China, which employs a million intelligence agents, was now capable of “sabotaging whole chunks of infrastructure” such as Germany’s power grid. “This poses a danger not just for Germany but for critical infrastructure worldwide,” he said.

Russia, he said, was also “top of the list” of states using internet spying techniques to garner vital German know-how which “helps save billions on their own economic research and development”. He said while Russia only had “hundreds of thousands of agents”, compared to China’s million, it had “years more experience”.

Opfermann estimated that German companies were losing around €50bn (£43bn) and 30,000 jobs to industrial espionage every year.

The areas most under attack include car manufacturing, renewable energies, chemistry, communication, optics, x-ray technology, machinery, materials research and armaments. Information being gathered was not just related to research and development but also management techniques and marketing strategies.

Opfermann said internet espionage was the biggest growth field, citing the “thick fog of Trojan email attacks” taking place against thousands of firms on a regular basis and the methods employed to cover up where the emails had come from.

But he said “old-fashioned” methods were also rife, such as phone-tapping, stealing laptops during business trips or Chinese companies who regularly sent spies to infiltrate companies.

In one case, the police raided the house of a Chinese woman suspected of stealing company secrets from a German business where she was working, and discovered 170 CDs containing highly sensitive product details.

In a separate case a highly qualified Chinese mechanical engineer employed by a company in the Lake Constance region was discovered to have passed on information for a machine it was developing to the company’s Chinese competitor, who constructed an exact copy.

In Britain last month the GCHQ, the government’s electronic spy centre, which estimates that the UK loses GBP 1bn a year to e-fraud, set up operations to deal with the growing threats. The Pentagon also announced it is to create a new “cyber command” and in May President Obama said he would establish a White House role to oversee cyber defence, saying the nation’s digital networks had to be recognised as a “strategic national asset”.

Belgium’s German speakers want to keep the nation together

Belgium is known for the linguistic and cultural tensions between the Flemish-speaking north and the French-speaking south. But the country’s thriving German community along the eastern border is keen on Belgian unity.

Tucked inside a pocket of countryside, among rolling hills and pastures, lies the town of Eupen. Some 73,000 German-speakers live around here, people who are known as the “Last Belgians.”

German is Belgium’s third official language – about 56 percent of the population speaks Flemish, 32 percent French, and just one percent German. Still, the people in the Eupen region are more committed to the Belgian state than their bickering Flemish and French compatriots.

Local public radio station BRF broadcasts popular German music and the community has its own newspaper and its own schools. It boasts 25 of its own members of parliament, as well as a guaranteed seat in the European Parliament.

But the community was not always as secure in its status as it is today.

Before the 19th century, the area served as a battleground for the French, British, Prussians and Austrians. When Europe’s maps were redrawn after Napoleon’s defeat, the region was carved up in the grab for land. The three separate German-speaking communities – around Eupen, Eifel and Kelmis – were divided between Prussia and the Netherlands, and later Belgium.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Belgium’s German-speakers have stickers identifying them as such, just so they’re not overlooked. The history of the region has been turbulent, especially during the period after World War One.

The end of the First World War was the beginning of a very difficult episode. The population of the territory was forced – and no one asked them – to change nationality and homeland three times within 25 years.

The first time was under the Treaty of Versailles, when the community was forced to become Belgian. The second was during the Hitler era, when the region was annexed to Nazi Germany. The third came after the Second World War, when the region was taken back by Belgium.

That means: three times a change of language, three times assimilation attempts, and the resistance against it, the so-called revisionism between the two world wars.