rio tinto iron ore sales team arrestd in china, page-57

There are two issues here, IMO:

The Chinese are past masters at spying on everything, everybody and every country they go to. Talk about taking the moral high ground. Hypocrites.

When most, if not all, the companies in China, especially in the iron ore business, are owned by the central Govt, then ANYTHING to do with that industry can be labelled a State secret and bring on accusations of espionage.

If a Chinese businessman did the same thing here in Australia he most certainly would not be accused of stealing State secrets because the Govt and business are not the same thing here.

And there lies the problem of doing business with a Communist regime that embraces ONLY those parts of free enterprise that suits them.