China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) said the individual was a foreigner and was trying to collect information inside the country.
Previous cases have focused on alleged activity by the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - so accusing Britain’s MI6 is more unusual.
Beijing has also launched public campaigns to raise awareness of foreign spying and calling on people to report any activity.
In this latest case, the MSS alleged that in 2015, MI6 recruited the foreign national to create what was described as an “intelligence cooperation relationship”.
In October, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, the UK’s domestic security service, described a “pretty epic” campaign of Chinese espionage.
Speaking to the BBC at an event in the US designed to highlight concerns over China, he said more than 20,000 people in the UK had been approached covertly online by Chinese spies.
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