Visiting professor used PhD students to gather intelligence for China, Asio boss alleges

Asio boss Mike Burgess says China’s behaviour has gone ‘well beyond traditional espionage’ and become ‘a ruthless business model aimed at seizing commercial advantage’. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

The spy agency Asio says it has disrupted a plot by China’s intelligence services to “infiltrate a prestigious Australian research institution” with officials forcing an academic to leave the country before any harm was done.

The Asio chief, Mike Burgess, provided broad details of the alleged plot while also accusing China of engaging in “the most sustained, scaled and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and expertise in human history”.