*Benedict Rogers is a British human rights activist and journalist based in London. *

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A Chinese woman came running down the street and stood on the pavement a few metres from my home, brazenly aimed her mobile phone directly at me, and took several photographs.

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I suspect I had been under surveillance for a few days. How else would she know that I would emerge from my home at that time in the morning? She was clearly waiting for me. I had noticed her earlier in the week, with another Chinese woman, picking nettles from a hedgerow at the end of my street.

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This is by no means my first brush with Beijing’s agents. In 2017 I became one of the first Westerners to be denied entry to Hong Kong. From 2018 I started to receive anonymous, threatening letters at my home address. Some of these went to my neighbours too. Even my mother – who lives in a different part of the country – received letters telling her to tell her son to “shut up”. This went on for several years, and was then followed by an email impersonation campaign – fake emails sent to others in my name.

In 2021, on a visit to Canada, I received anonymous emails identifying my hotel in Vancouver accompanied by a veiled threat. In 2022, I received an official letter from the Hong Kong Police warning me that I was violating Hong Kong’s draconian national security law and that if I did not stop my activities, I could face a prison sentence in Hong Kong for my advocacy work in London and around the world.

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I have known for almost a decade that I am in Beijing’s sights. But it is one thing to receive letters sent from Hong Kong through the letterbox. It is quite another to open the front door and find a potential Chinese agent or collaborator on the pavement outside. Of course I reported the incident to the British police, and they have been very responsive.

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Yet what I have experienced is nothing compared to the sustained threats to diaspora communities, and to their families back home.

The landmark conviction of two Chinese Communist Party agents by the Old Bailey this week sends a welcome and long overdue message to Beijing: your transnational repression and foreign interference campaigns in Britain will no longer be tolerated.

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It is time for the UK Government to place China immediately in the enhanced tier of the UK’s Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, alongside Russia and Iran. This would mean that when influence operations are conducted without being declared, they would be considered criminal acts.

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The Government should also announce a comprehensive review of consular privileges and immunities granted to the HKETO [Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office] in London and consider stripping it of its diplomatic status. The Government should also assess whether the continued operation of the HKETO in London – which this case has shown to be a hub for spying and surveillance activities under the control of the Chinese Communist Party – is in our national security interests or not.

Beijing and its agents must be left in no doubt now: your illicit surveillance and threats to residents and citizens of our country will no longer be tolerated or ignored.

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[Edit typo.]