State Secrecy Bureau: China paid 700 billion yuan for Rio Tinto's six years of spying

Mining giant Rio Tinto has engaged in stealing China's steel industry secrets for six years resulting in China's losses of 700 billion yuan, according to a report released Saturday on China's State Secrecy Bureau's website Baomi.org.

According to the report, Rio Tinto's commercial spying activities included "winning over and buying off, prying out intelligence, bribing Chinese companies one by one, and gaining things by deceit" over six years.

Rio Tinto insisted that its employees did nothing "unethical" and denied that its employees bribed Chinese steel mills staff for information on iron ore prices.

But the data found on the company's computers prove its claims untrue since there is a lot of data and intelligence about China's steel sector, and China paid more than 700 billion yuan for Rio Tinto's espionage activities.

The panel also found that Rio Tinto not only bribed for commercial information from large-scale State-owned enterprises, but also some small- and mid-sized companies, by offering them more import quotas.

The report said that Stern Hu, the Chinese-born Australian executive of Rio, bought several luxurious villas through the wealth he obtained in this way, each of them worth more than 100 million yuan.

China has detained four employees including Hu in Shanghai on allegations of stealing commercial secrets in July.

The report also pointed out that the Rio Tinto case reflects the Chinese government's insufficient control over the protection of state secrets and the case has caused alarm for the government since China has entered a peak period of commercial espionage warfare as it quickly develops.

The government needs to take measures, according to the report. The laws on commercial secrets need to be further improved, and supervision on officials of China's enterprises also need to be increased. Moreover, communication between different departments needs to be enhanced to ensure the safety of state secrets.