Xi Jin­ping woos West­ern busi­ness­es while spy agency airs warn­ings

China’s coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cials have warned busi­ness­es under Beijing’s juris­dic­tion that shar­ing infor­ma­tion with West­ern cor­po­rate con­sult­ing firms could “seri­ous­ly endan­ger nation­al secu­ri­ty.”
“Such infor­ma­tion, if accu­mu­lat­ed to a cer­tain extent and ana­lyzed in a com­pre­hen­sive man­ner, can reflect impor­tant infor­ma­tion about our eco­nom­ic oper­a­tion, nation­al defense and mil­i­tary,” accord­ing to China’s Min­istry of State Secu­ri­ty.
The warn­ing accom­pa­nied a video that out­lined a pur­port­ed inci­dent in which a con­sul­tan­cy exploit­ed its rela­tion­ship with a Chi­nese client on behalf of “over­seas spy agen­cies,” as the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post explained. The mes­sage under­scores the fraught dynam­ics of inter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships that Chi­nese offi­cials are keen to expand, even as the com­mu­nist regime and West­ern pow­ers view each oth­er with increas­ing sus­pi­cion.
“We will pro­vide broad­er devel­op­ment space for U.S. and oth­er for­eign busi­ness­es,” Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry spokesman Lin Jian said Thurs­day. “In the busi­ness coop­er­a­tion, the two sides should stay com­mit­ted to mutu­al respect, mutu­al ben­e­fit, and …