China's army of super soldiers: How Beijing is ruthlessly amassing the world's biggest DNA database - much of it harvested from millions in the West

With a plump, barrel-shaped body and eight stubby legs, the water bear may not be a beauty – but it is almost indestructible.

The creatures, also known as 'tardigrades' and measuring less than one millimetre long, can survive being frozen, boiled, exposed to the vacuum of outer space or whacked with X-rays at a dose 500 times that which would kill a person.

So when Chinese scientists recently claimed to have combined tardigrade genes with human DNA – to produce a human gene resistant to radiation – it set alarms ringing in the West.

It seemed to confirm the sci-fi ambition of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to harness the power of genomics to create 'super soldiers' who are faster, healthier, smarter and stronger than their adversaries.

Genomics, the study of genes, can be used in multiple ways – from tailoring cancer treatments for an individual to testing someone's susceptibility to developing a certain disease. But in the wrong hands it has chilling implications.

There are fears it could be employed to surveil entire ethnic groups or target them with bespoke weapons. Or used to turn super-human combatants – the likes of which we assumed belonged only in Marvel movies – from a nightmare into a reality.

It may sound far-fetched, but China has made little secret of its mission to win the race to corner 'the essence of everything' – as the country's BGI Group (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) has characterised efforts to harvest DNA and build the world's largest database of genetic material. It's a startling goal.

Policymakers in the West are only just waking to the disturbing economic and military dangers of CCP control over the very building blocks of life.

'US intelligence shows that China has even conducted human testing on members of the People's Liberation Army in the hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities,' according to John Ratcliffe, former US director of national intelligence. 'There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing's pursuit of power.'

One enhanced capability would be the ability to fight at high altitudes. To this end, the Chinese state is studying the genes of its repressed Tibetan population, to discover how they are adapted for life on the Tibetan plateau.

One of the key participants in this research is the Kunming Institute of Zoology, which is also a founding member of the Centre for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The head of GCHQ , Britain's signals intelligence agency, has warned that synthetic biology and genetics, alongside artificial intelligence , are technologies in which China is seeking to dominate in order to gain control of 'the global operating system'.

Compare that to Beijing's great ally Vladimir Putin , who has waxed lyrical about the prospect of creating a Russian soldier 'who can fight without fear, compassion, regret or pain'.

With few of the ethical constraints that govern genomic research in the West, China has made the greatest strides towards that terrifying goal.

In September, the US House of Representatives was sufficiently worried about national security to pass the Biosecure Act to restrict business with the BGI Group, which manages China's National Gene Bank on behalf of the government, as well as several other Chinese biotech companies.

BGI pioneered an advanced genetic sequencing system, which is being promoted worldwide as a medical tool.

Called 'Huo-Yan', or 'Fire Eye' in English, the name derives from the story of a mythical Chinese monkey king with the capacity to see through disguises to spot imposters in the royal palace.

'Fire eyes can see the essence of everything,' says the company's website. The US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence has warned that the system may be 'a global collection mechanism for Chinese government genetic databases, providing China with greater raw numbers and diversity of human genome samples as well as access to sensitive personal information about key individuals around the world.'

BGI has worked with the Chinese army on at least 12 research projects that include efforts to improve 'population quality' and on genetic research to combat hearing loss and altitude sickness in soldiers, according to a review of research, patent filings and other documents obtained by the Reuters news agency.

When it comes to gaining an economic or military edge, the size and diversity of genetic data is crucial – which is why harvesting it beyond China is so important to the CCP. For example, BGI produces a best-selling prenatal Non-Invasive Fetal Trisomy (or Nifty) test, which involves the analysis of blood samples and can cost as much as £500 in fertility clinics.

The test is used by millions of pregnant women globally and was reportedly developed in collaboration with the Chinese military.

It is one of the world's top-selling non-invasive tests to detect abnormalities such as Down's Syndrome, and is sold in at least 52 countries, including the UK, raising fears that the data is being transferred to China for possible military research.

The Covid-19 pandemic proved especially useful for the mass collection of DNA within China, but Beijing was also able to export testing facilities in the name of helping fight the virus globally, donating mobile labs to 20 countries on four continents, including Canada , Australia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa .

In the words of a slick company video, the program claimed to provide 'comprehensive solutions for precision medicine globally in the new era'. And despite BGI's insistence that data remained private, there are fears information could have been passed back to Beijing.

Latvia 's domestic security agency has warned customers using BGI facilities to be cautious and not swayed by the company's assurances about data security.

A European Union-funded project to build a genomic map of Poland vetoed the use of BGI gene-sequencing equipment over similar concerns.

In contrast, the UK has resisted calls to investigate the firm's activities, despite China being suspected of multiple attempts to hack genetic data centres in the NHS . Some 16 British universities have collaborated with BGI or its subsidiaries in the past decade, including Oxford, Bath, Exeter, Manchester and Edinburgh .

Several projects were reportedly funded by UK Research and Innovation, a government body that issues science and technology grants. In 2021, the Department of Health even granted BGI an £11million Covid testing contract.

BGI denies it is harvesting genetic data on behalf of the CCP. 'None of BGI Group is state-owned or state controlled, and all of BGI Group's services and research are provided for civilian and scientific purposes,' it claims.

Yet all Chinese companies are compelled by law to share data and support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts. There is no mechanism for Chinese companies to refuse a Communist Party request for data.

In addition, BGI is regarded as a champion in Beijing's efforts to lead the world in biotechnology and has received massive government support.

Transferring tech from nominally civilian researchers to the military – so-called military-civil fusion – is a key CCP doctrine. The People's Liberation Army, meanwhile, sees bioweapons as part of future warfare, what it refers to as 'biological deterrence' and 'militarisation of biotechnology'. Its scientists have already genetically engineered pigs, monkeys, mice, rats, rabbits and dogs.

The western province of Xinjiang, where the CCP has been accused of genocide against the ethnic Uighur population, has been a key testing ground for China's genomic ambitions.

Here, harvesting of DNA for surveillance and control took place under the guise of 'physicals for all' – free health checks. It was part of a vast scheme to collect biometric data, feeding photographs, DNA samples, fingerprints, iris scans and blood types of all residents aged 12 to 65 into a central searchable database.

Officials were told to 'ensure [information from] every household in every village, every person in every household, every item for every person' is collected.

Scientists looked at ways to use a DNA sample to create an image of a person's face. The process, called DNA phenotyping, analyses genes for traits such as skin colour, eye colour and ancestry. It could considerably enhance facial recognition and surveillance systems.

The 'health check' model has since been extended elsewhere in China, while saliva swabs or blood samples are routinely gathered from those arrested for even minor misdemeanours. These include failing to carry identity cards or writing blogs critical of the state, according to documents presented to a national police DNA conference.

'We're transforming DNA technology from simply a criminal investigation tool into an important initiative for social control and safety keeping,' according to a conference paper from police in the northern city of Ningxia. The CCP is now aiming to build the world's largest DNA database, a target turbo-charged under the cover of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cyber espionage has been a reliable tool in this endeavour, too – the US Justice Department has indicted Chinese operatives for allegedly stealing patient databases at four companies, including DNA information on more than 80 million Americans.

When China was recently accused of hacking Britain's Electoral Commission and a payroll system used by the Ministry of Defence, No 10 played down the significance of the breaches.

In reality, the danger lies not in individual hacks, but their use with other data – including DNA – to identify individuals and groups and their vulnerabilities and potentially target them for surveillance, manipulation or even elimination.

Coupled with the computing power of artificial intelligence to process and cross-reference data on a vast scale, the potential of genomics in targeted warfare becomes especially alarming.

The US's National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned: 'Vulnerabilities in specific individuals revealed by genomic data or health records could be used to help target these individuals.'

The fear is that the data reveals how different population groups have differing susceptibilities to diseases or other disorders.

The clumsy and crude poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter by Russian spies using the nerve agent novichok in 2018 would look amateur compared to the nightmare of perfectly tailored and hard-to-detect genetic weapons.

Many Western scientists are horrified by research that modifies human genes in potentially dangerous and unpredictable ways – such as with the water bear and earlier research that claimed to have edited the DNA of babies supposedly to make them more resistant to HIV . Not least because of the danger posed by the worrying characteristics of Chinese research – woeful ethics and sloppy standards – that many suspect led to the leaking of the Covid-19 virus from a lab in Wuhan .

The notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology contains the world's largest collection of bat viruses and for more than a decade it carried out research on coronaviruses, including risky 'gain of function' tests – essentially enhancing the potency of a virus in relation to humans, supposedly to better learn about combating it.

Neither the suspected leak from that lab, which is assumed to have killed more than seven million people worldwide, nor the protests of Western institutions and lawmakers are preventing China from pressing ahead with its chilling plan to capture the world of genomics.

And ultimately, whether the CCP creates a monster by design or accident, it is extremely dangerous for the rest of the world.