Fresh warnings issued over Chinese espionage in New Zealand

The NZSIS has joined global Five Eyes partners in warning about ‘malicious approaches’ being made on sites like LinkedIn by China’s military intelligence services.

A joint warning said, “National security clearance holders, military personnel and those with access to sensitive government information are particularly at risk.”

It often starts with an ‘innocuous sounding request’ that eventually moves on to more sensitive areas such as ‘military issues, international relations, or insights on government decision making’. 

Paul Buchanan is among those who have been approached. 

Buchanan is a former policy analyst and consultant to US government security agencies, and is now a Director at 36th-parallel - his own consulting firm. 

He believes these kinds of approaches are very common, through his own experience. 

“I have been approached by a foreign intelligence agency through LinkedIn, who were interested in what I'm doing in my private consultancy, but it was clearly directed at some of the things that I've done in the past.”

“If I'm an example of that, then you can imagine these approaches are occurring regularly to thousands of people.”

He believes these methods of gathering information can be both cheap and effective. 

“The people who are doing this really well understand human nature... they rarely start out in a hostile manner. They usually start in a very flattering or kindly manner. And all of us will be flattered in response - we like being liked.”

He said people tend to ‘start blurting out things’ beyond what is asked.

Even small bits of information can prove to be quite powerful, and he said these can be accumulated into a ‘data bank’ and mined using AI to build profiles.

Questions could range from gathering opinions on policy, or how likely the government is to act in a certain way - which is nothing new, just ‘old tradecraft in new garb’.

When asked how New Zealand can combat this issue, Buchanan believed there is not much that can be done.

“I think that the warning that's been issued is actually getting close to probably the last thing you can do.”

However, he did believe there could be scope for possible penalties for government, military, or SIS workers who did not report approaches to their superiors. 

This is not the first time China has been the subject of concerns about espionage in New Zealand. 

In 2024, the NZSIS released an assessment which outlined several concerning behaviours by the People’s Republic of China, prompting a scathing response by the Chinese Embassy.

It claimed the allegations were ‘entirely baseless’ and ‘a figment of imagination’ that ‘reflects ideological bias and Cold War mentality’.

The Chinese Embassy in Wellington has been approached for comment on the latest accusations.