Chinese spies are posing as job recruiters to trick staff in western governments into disclosing sensitive information, the Five Eyes alliance of security agencies has warned.

China’s military intelligence services advertise false jobs such as foreign policy or defence analysts on platforms including LinkedIn, the spy agencies of Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand said jointly late Wednesday.

The agents pretend to be HR consultants or employees of “legitimate-looking” private consultancies or think-tanks that claim to be located outside of China.

They pressurise candidates into revealing “non-public” information during the interview process, including by writing a report, the intelligence agencies said.

People with security clearance, military personnel, journalists and academics are among those targeted, the Five Eyes added.

Military staff may be asked about their roles and unit activities, home base or naval vessel.

Recruits receive anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per report, and may be offered more money in return for increasingly sensitive information, the agencies said.

They warned that “while applicants often have no direct access to classified information, even unclassified information” can be helpful to the Chinese government.

“Certain types of data can place the lives of frontline military or other personnel at risk, can weaken our economic prosperity, and enable interference in our democratic processes,” the agencies wrote.

They said they had identified people who had been duped by the scam, “leading to criminal prosecutions, job losses, and security-clearance revocation”.

Western spy agencies have repeatedly warned of the threat of espionage from China, as well as from Russia and Iran, in recent years.

Last month, two Chinese-British dual nationals were convicted by a jury in London of spying on Hong Kong dissidents on Beijing’s behalf. They are awaiting sentencing.

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