After learning that Wang “had a strong desire for money”, they then approached him to provide well-paid consulting services that came to involve the internal workings of central state agencies, the ministry said.
MI6 personnel later revealed their identities to Wang and directed him to return to China to collect intelligence, convincing him to coerce Zhou into doing the same.
The ministry said it had gathered evidence and taken “decisive measures” against Wang, adding that the case was under further investigation.
The statement gave no details of Wang or Zhou’s current occupations in China, the nature of the information they provided, or their whereabouts.
AFP has contacted Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which handles MI6 press enquiries, for comment.
China and Western powers have long traded accusations of spying but only recently started to disclose details of alleged individual cases.
Last month, British police said Matthew Trickett, who had been charged with helping the semi-autonomous Chinese city of Hong Kong to gather intelligence in the UK, had been found dead in unexplained circumstances.
And in April, German authorities arrested four people on suspicion of spying for China, in the same week that British police charged two men with passing sensitive information to Beijing between 2021 and last year.
