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China is using cryptocurrencies to spread global influence, warns UK

British cybersecurity agency (GCHQ) director Jeremy Fleming believes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is looking to use technologies such as digital currencies and satellite systems to bolster influence abroad.

In passages of a speech scheduled for Tuesday, released in advance, Fleming says that, while the United Kingdom and allied countries want to develop science and technology to promote prosperity, the Chinese regime is using financial and scientific might. to “gain an advantage by controlling markets, those in their sphere of influence and their own citizens”.

GCHQ believes that the Central Bank of China’s digital currencies allow the state to monitor user habits and potentially avoid international sanctions such as the international community has imposed on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Another example is the BeiDou satellite system, which the agency fears could be used by the CCP to control or prevent other countries from accessing in the event of a conflict and potentially to locate individuals.

Jeremy Fleming, Director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s intelligence, cybersecurity and security agency, will speak in London as a guest speaker at the British think tank’s annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute.

“The Chinese leadership believes that it draws its strength, its authority, from the closed, one-party system. They seek to gain an advantage through scale and control. This means that they see opportunities to control the Chinese people rather than looking for ways to support and unleash their citizens’ potential. They see countries as potential adversaries or as potential state customers, to be threatened, bribed, or coerced,” he will say.

Underlying this approach, according to Fleming, is a “feeling of fear”.

“Fear of their own citizens, of free speech, free trade, open technological rules and alliances – the whole open and democratic order and rules-based international system,” he adds.

In the speech, he will also talk about the war in Ukraine, and criticize Moscow’s “high-risk strategy” “which is leading to strategic mistakes”.

“We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that supplies and ammunition are running low. Russian forces are exhausted. The use of prisoners to reinforce, and now the mobilization of tens of thousands of inexperienced recruits, reflects a desperate situation. And the Russian population has also begun to understand that,” he reveals.

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Generalist media, focusing on the relationship between Portuguese-speaking countries and China.

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