The reports in The Times and The Independent newspapers come a day after US President George W. Bush said he may bring up the issue of suspected Chinese cyber-attacks on the US defence department in a meeting with China's President Hu Jintao.

"China is engaged in hostile intelligence activities, and instead of using the old-fashioned methods, they are focusing on electronic means to hack into systems to discover Britain's defence and foreign policy secrets, and they are technologically pretty advanced and adept at it," an unnamed government source told The Times.

Another senior government source, meanwhile, told The Independent: "Governments throughout the West have been aware of this for a number of years. It has been an ongoing practice by the Chinese. They are trying it all the time. The firewalls that need to go in are going in."

Both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have declined to comment on the reports.

In Washington, the Pentagon said Tuesday that several nations and groups were trying to break into the US military's computer system after the Financial Times reported China's military had successfully hacked into the network in June.

Unanmed officials told the Financial Times the attack was by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and that it led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

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