WEDNESDAY’S joint address by the heads of the MI5 and the FBI should have rung alarm bells for anyone who wishes to avoid a third world war.

FBI director Christopher Wray claimed that the Chinese state and ruling Communist Party (CPC) represent the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security” and — oh the irony — accused them of interfering in politics and elections.

MI5 director general Ken McCallum accused the CPC of posing the biggest “game-changing challenge” to the vital interests of Britain and its allies.

Not to be outdone, Wray described the challenge as “immense and breath-taking.”

The pair told their audience of business and university chiefs at MI5 HQ that the CPC through its agents, allies and unwitting friends is engaged in a vast, long-term campaign of “planned, professional activity” to steal industrial and military secrets and bend the course of political development to China’s will through bribery and corruption.

McCallum revealed that his service has more than doubled the resources it devotes to combatting CPC activities in Britain over the past three years and would soon be doubling them again. MI5 is running seven times as many CPC-related investigations as in 2018.

He drew succour from the extensive powers contained in Britain’s new National Security and Investment Act. He positively salivated over the National Security Bill currently going through the Westminster parliament.

The latter creates a host of fresh catch-all criminal offences for assisting “foreign power threat activity” and bestows far-reaching powers upon the police, secret services and courts to investigate, prosecute and punish wayward dissidents.

The proponents of the “strong state” in Britain are determined to protect our freedoms even if they have to lock us all up in order to do so.

Wray waded in to warn that the forcible return of Taiwan to China would cause “one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen.”

This reflects both the belligerent threats made against China at the recent Nato summit and the core mission of Nato itself, namely, to protect and promote Western big business interests around the world.

Make no mistake, British and Western public opinion is being prepared for future confrontations with China, including over the future of Taiwan.

One does not have to be a supporter of China’s socio-economic and political system to highlight the enormity of the hypocrisy and dangers of this aggressive approach.

The US, Britain and Nato have military bases across the world, including on three of China’s four sides. China merely has a storage and re-fuelling facility or two beyond its own borders.

Seven large US naval fleets patrol the world’s oceans, including the South China Sea where they are reinforced by British, Australian and other warships. A lone Chinese destroyer sailing down the English Channel in 2019 made headline news in the British media.

US, British, French and other intelligence operations have spanned the globe for 75 years, spying without scruple on their own and each others’ citizens as well as the Chinese.

Western military forces have bombed, invaded and occupied scores of countries since the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, killing millions of civilians from south-east Asia and the Middle East to Africa and Latin America.

US, British and French interference in foreign elections around the world is well documented. It usually favours puppets, fascists and military dictators against left-wing and anti-imperialist candidates.

China’s priorities have been very different: people-centred economic growth, social development, mutually beneficial foreign investment and the peaceful resolution of disputes. A threat to much-vaunted “Western values” indeed.