BEIJING, April 23. /TASS/. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin has dismissed statements about the country’s spying activities as untrue, as he commented on the arrest on suspicion of espionage for Beijing of a man, who worked for a German member of the European Parliament.
"The purpose of this kind of hype is quite obvious: It is to discredit and suppress China, and to destroy the atmosphere of cooperation between China and Europe," he said. "China hopes that relevant individuals in Germany will reject the Cold War mentality and stop using the so-called espionage risk to organize anti-China political manipulation."
China "strongly opposes such hype and calls on relevant sides to stop spreading false information about the so-called Chinese espionage threat and stop anti-China political manipulation and malicious slander," Wang Wenbin went on to say.
Earlier, the German Public Prosecutor General’s Office in Karlsruhe said a staffer at the office of a German member of the European Parliament was arrested on suspicion of alleged cooperation with Chinese intelligence services. Prosecutors said the detainee "is an employee of a Chinese intelligence service," who also allegedly collected data on opponents of the Chinese government living in Germany. His apartment was searched. According to unofficial data from the newspaper Zeit, the person is a 43-year-old native of China, who received a German passport earlier, after studying in Germany. In 2019, he started to work as an aide to Maximilian Krah, a lawmaker at the right-wing Alternative for Germany party, who leads the list of right-wing forces in European Parliament elections. The suspect accompanied the lawmaker on a business trip to China.