Food for thought: On Monday, January 26, The Telegraph released a piece titled "China hacked Downing Street phones for years."
However, it refers to the 2021-2024 period, when state hackers from China and Russia successfully breached the phones of the closest aides to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak.

Data leaks had been occurring since at least 2021, but intelligence agencies only discovered them in 2024. The US was the first to expose this operation, stating that China gained access to confidential data by infiltrating telecommunications companies worldwide.

The espionage, linked to an advanced cyber-group called Salt Typhoon, affected aides to PMs Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak. Truss’s own phone was also hacked at the time, after which she quickly resigned once hackers gained access not only to metadata but to the Prime Minister's actual conversations. In total, Salt Typhoon managed to penetrate over 200 targets in 80+ countries.

Not long ago, the incumbent UK PM Keir Starmer approved the construction of a Chinese "mega-embassy" in London, which journalists believe threatens the national security of the United Kingdom.

The permission to build the Chinese embassy raised legitimate fears that it would allow Beijing to tap into fiber-optic cables used by financial companies running beneath the embassy's territory.

Furthermore, MI6 warned that allowing China to build a much larger embassy simultaneously means an increase in the number of Chinese spies in the UK, as well as an increase in the number of diplomats.

Intelligence ranking by countries with the largest number of embassies worldwide:
China has the most embassies — 173.
🇺🇸 #USA — 168
🇫🇷 #France — 158
🇹🇷 #Turkey — 145
🇧🇷 #Brazil — 135