In the regular drumbeat of arrests of alleged Chinese spies, one case last month stood out.
It did not involve the U.S. or another rival of China, but Russia, whose security services accused a prominent scientist of selling classified data on technologies for detecting submarines.
Meanwhile a court in Kazakhstan in October convicted the Central Asia nation’s pre-eminent China specialist of espionage, a move widely interpreted at the time as a warning against increased meddling by the superpower next door.