The word “spy” doesn’t really cover it, but it’s a start. This week, MI5 issued an unusual alert to MPs, warning them that an agent of the Chinese state named Christine Lee is “engaged in political interference” on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party and that politicians ought to be “mindful” of her. Ms Lee’s close relationship to the Chinese state and her UK political donations have been widely covered by media for at least four years, so it’s nice to see that MI5 has noticed. What’s notable about this move, however, is that it shows that our government is finally exploring ways to tackle the problem of CCP meddling.

After all, you do not need to be a spook to know that the case of Ms Lee is just the tip of the iceberg. The problem of CCP interference is systemic, not just in our political class, but also among our academics and in certain business sectors like finance and telecoms. We need new laws to root it out and new forms of government advice, support and protection to counter what is a new threat to our society.

No one should be in doubt as to the threat the CCP poses. Somehow unnoticed by most of our educated classes, Beijing has been ramping up its anti-democratic activities at home and abroad ever since Xi Jinping came to power, an agenda explicitly outlined in a dossier leaked early in Mr Xi’s tenure known as Document 9.

The enormous resources poured into the United Front Work Department (UFWD), the Chinese government entity that Ms Lee works for, are a crucial part of the programme. But the United Front is not an intelligence agency in the conventional sense and its agents are not “spies” in the sense that we’re used to reading about from the Cold War or John le Carré novels. And this is why we have been so slow to recognise the threat.

The United Front’s work is sprawling. It includes legitimate activity, like making Beijing’s case openly in a public forum, or establishing scholarships for students to study in China. But it also includes pernicious and covert activity, like bribing, blackmailing or coercing people or business to serve CCP interests and censor critics. Its agents are not spies trying to get hold of secret blueprints, but charming networkers like Ms Lee, who are not open about their links to the Chinese state and thereby gain trust and access, whether in Parliament or in laboratories, which they use to promote CCP interests.

These efforts are given an enormous boost by the participation, unwitting or not, of so many people in our political and intellectual classes. Ms Lee, for example, was funnelling money into the office of Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP, and has donated to Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader. But there are other conduits available to the CCP, like British companies and individuals with major Chinese assets who are friendly to the regime.

There are also powerful figures who, like Cambridge professor Peter Nolan, have effectively been mouthpieces for propaganda, or lobby for Chinese interests such as Huawei, like the former Foreign Office permanent secretary Simon Fraser. There are figures recently in government, like departed No 10 adviser Sir Eddie Lister, who was thanked by the Chinese ambassador for his “effort” in helping secure a site to build its vast new UK embassy. There are even those in government today, like investment minister and ex-banker Lord Grimstone, who, shortly before becoming a minister, praised Mr Xi’s “strong authoritarian guidance” in Hong Kong and, while in government, has pushed to allow the Chinese owner of TikTok, ByteDance, to build a huge new headquarters in the UK.

What we are facing is a new problem but one that echoes the era of “amateur diplomats” active during the period of appeasement; people who thought they were furthering the cause of peace when they made Hitler’s case in London and tried to build an Anglo-German “friendship”, but who were really emboldening a terrifying regime. Like its historic equivalent, the modern version is difficult to stamp out because we believe that people ought generally to have the freedom to do as they please. It is especially hard to tackle because these self-appointed diplomats may not be corrupt or knowingly disloyal to the UK, but may be manipulated, deluded or complacent, or genuinely hold these views.

Nor should we seek to suppress open debate or straightforward lobbying by those who support Beijing’s cause, however distasteful. The issue is that the United Front operates covertly. Its agents set up organisations or forge international links with purportedly independent and benign missions and use them to collect valuable intelligence, identify people to wine and dine, file dishonest complaints, organise supposedly spontaneous protests, besmirch the reputations or limit the careers of the unco-operative, or conduct illegal activity, like hiding foreign political donations or stealing technology. Unlike in the Cold War, this is not limited to a narrow subset of fringe media or politicians. It is widespread and devastatingly effective.

One of the worst risks this creates is that ordinary ethnically Chinese people in the UK start to be regarded with suspicion. Some pro-China voices even claim – demonstrating a special kind of bigotry – that it is racist to worry about meddling by the CCP or to support robust measures against it. The Chinese diaspora is unsurprisingly a prime target of United Front efforts, in part because Beijing’s racist creed lays claim to the loyalty of all ethnically Chinese people, but also because this community is more likely to be vulnerable to threats via family or business links to China. Anyone who is interested in the welfare of ethnically Chinese Britons should be focused on preventing the Chinese state from coercing them for its own ends.

What is urgently needed is new legislation, modelled on an Australian law passed in 2018, that defines foreign interference in our society and makes it a crime to engage in it without openly declaring one’s links to a foreign government. This would also help to capture similar activities (mostly on a much smaller scale) conducted by governments like Russia and Saudi Arabia. A UK version of the US Foreign Agent Registration Act, which Bob Seely MP has worked on, would also help.

In addition, the government needs to set up a specialised office that can advise targets of United Front work, from politicians to university vice-chancellors and businesses, on how to recognise these activities and what to do when they encounter them. A hotline for people being harassed or coerced by suspected Chinese agents would build a picture of what’s going on and hopefully offer some protection.

Above all, we need to shine the light of public scrutiny on people like Ms Lee and all her United Front colleagues in order to box them in and make it impossible for them to keep operating. MI5 has shown it can be done. Let’s hope this is just the beginning.