Eight hundred acres of living theatre had been lovingly produced to allow the emperor to traverse his kingdom and the world without leaving home: The Garden of Eternal Brightness contained the temples of Tibet and Mongolia, the garden of Hangzhou, and a street scene with actors playing shopkeepers, entertainers and even beggars. The Western gardens, designed by Jesuit missionaries, included faux-baroque palaces and monuments modelled on the greatest European architecture.

Then, in 1860, French and British armies marched into Beijing, pillaging the Garden of Eternal Brightness and stealing royal treasures, including a Pekinese dog they nicknamed “Looty.” Around 10 years ago, in 2013, when Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, he took top colleagues on a museum tour recording those events—and claimed the Communist Party alone could guard China’s independence.

Late in the summer of 2018, Ding Xiaoyang stood in the headquarters of the Ministry of State Security—located on the western end of the ruins of the Garden of Eternal Brightness—to receive a medal honouring the intelligence officer’s contributions. Through a front company called Hainan Technology, United States prosecutors have alleged, Ding identified and recruited “talented computer hackers to penetrate foreign entities and steal trade secrets, proprietary research and data.”

The Ministry of State Security—China’s principal intelligence service—targeted cutting-edge research on biotechnology, robotics and applied physics at universities and even industrial conglomerates. The campaign was part of a secret war authorised by Xi to secure the “great national revival” he promised.

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The world of ‘Wicked Rose’

For more than two weeks now, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has been struggling to restore data lost in a ransomware attack. The data was said to have been obliterated by malware developed inside Chinese intelligence-controlled hacking networks. Experts are uncertain about the identity and motives of the attackers—which could range from ransom…