Three Germans have been working for China's secret services for almost two years. They have been arrested.
The trio of suspects were allegedly sending China information on technology with potential military uses.
The Associated Press agency quotes a police statement from Monday, which indicates that one of the suspects was an agent for an official in China's Ministry of State Security; he collected information on innovative technologies with military use for the Chinese government.
GEIR MOULSONHe enlisted the help of a couple who owned a company in Düsseldorf. This company used to contact and work with German researchers.
This couple is said to have signed an agreement with another German company to initially design a study for a Chinese partner on parts technology for powerful ship engines, including warships.
This study was to be financed - discreetly and illegally - by state money from China.
The suspects were already entering another phase: research projects to expand the Chinese Navy's fighting force.
There are spies in German business, German industry and German science.
In science, it is suspected that there are more and more scientists "commissioned" by the Chinese authorities: they go to Germany to carry out research, stay and work in the European country - but their task is to take confidential information back to China.
Most of them are Chinese PhD students involved in individual projects in German companies, in a scheme of alleged scientific cooperation. As they have access to the companies and their databases, they try (and many succeed) in obtaining information about future scientific research.
Germany's Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, has already warned that this is a "considerable danger".
The UOL portal even called this Chinese scheme a "dirty game".
