Pair Jailed for Spying for Britain

A Chinese court has jailed two British spies for at least 15 years, it was reported yesterday after a secret trial of the biggest bilateral espionage case since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997.

Cai Xiaohong, the former secretary general of Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong, was found guilty of passing state secrets to British agents, according to the South China Morning Post.

Separate reports said he had received payments of HK$6m (£400,000) for information about the 2001 visit to the territory by former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, and other classified material.

Cai, the son of a former Chinese justice minister, was arrested last year and tried in secret in the southern city of Guangzhou last week. Beijing is said to have suppressed details of the case to avoid a diplomatic incident in the wake of Tony Blair's visit to China last year.

His 15-year sentence was lighter than that of his colleague, Wei Pingyuan, a British passport holder, who worked in the same Hong Kong branch of the Xinhua news agency.

Reports said Wei's crime was considered more serious because he was a member of the British secret service and failed to show sufficient remorse.

A third accused, Liu Lin, former chief of staff at Xinhua, is awaiting sentencing.

Compared with spying incidents involving Taiwan, Beijing has played down revelations of British espionage. Several agents have been sentenced to death for passing on information to Taiwan and their arrests are usually front-page news.