A former US Defense Intelligence Agency official will be jailed for 15 years after pleading guilty Friday to charges of attempting to sell classified information to the Chinese, the Department of Justice said.

Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, a former DIA operative based in Beijing, was arrested in June while preparing to board a flight to China carrying classified information.

Investigators said Hansen, a fluent Mandarin Chinese and Russian speaker, had fallen into deep financial trouble from 2013 to 2016 and was paid more than $800,000 by Chinese intelligence for US secrets.

During that time they found that he had regular meetings with Chinese intelligence agents that he never reported, used cellphones provided him by Chinese sources and retained classified information to which he was not supposed to have access.

They discovered his work with the Chinese when in 2016 he tried to recruit a fellow intelligence case officer to work with him and the colleague reported it to their superiors.

In a deal with prosecutors Hansen pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government.

The deal set his sentence at 15 years.

US intelligence has been struggling hard against a Chinese espionage offensive that saw the CIA's Chinese informant network rolled up by Beijing several years ago, and saw several US officials exposed as Chinese spies.

In January 2018, former CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested on charges that he sold information to China. He is reportedly suspected of having provided information that allowed China to bring down the CIA's network between 2010 and 2012.

Former State Department official Kevin Mallory was arrested in 2017 for spying for China.

And another US diplomat, Candace Marie Claiborne, was also arrested for taking money from Chinese intelligence officials, though she was not directly accused of supplying information in exchange.

China does not ask firms to spy on others: premier
Beijing (AFP) March 15, 2019 –

China will "never" ask its firms to spy on other nations, Premier Li Keqiang said Friday, amid US warnings that Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei poses security risks.

The United States has launched a global campaign to convince Western allies to shut Huawei out of next-generation 5G technology over fears the company could be used by Beijing for espionage.

A law recently enacted by Beijing that obliges Chinese companies to aid the government on national security has added to the concerns.

But Premier Li Keqiang said the government would not ask any company to spy on its behalf.

"There is none of that now, and there never will be (any of it) in the future," Li told journalists at a press briefing marking the end of China's yearly parliamentary meeting.

"This is not in accordance with Chinese law, and is not how China does things."

China's government voiced support last week for a lawsuit Huawei filed against the United States over legislation preventing American federal agencies from buying its equipment and services.

Washington this week upped the pressure on its European allies to not use the firm, threatening to cut back intelligence cooperation with Germany if it uses Huawei equipment.

Canada arrested Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in December at the behest of the United States over charges of Iranian sanctions violations. Two Canadians, including a former diplomat, have been detained in China in apparent retaliation since then.

Her father is the company's founder, Ren Zhengfei, a former engineer in the People's Liberation Army.