China has hacked into the computers of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery and three other German ministries in an extraordinary economic espionage operation that threatens to blight the German leader’s already delicate trip to Beijing this week. The claims, made in a detailed investigation by Der Spiegel magazine, were denied strenuously by the Chinese authorities yesterday, but there was no mistaking German anger. “If true, it is unacceptable,” Ralf Stegner, a senior Social Democrat, said. “China is a competitor as well as a trading partner. Mrs Merkel has to get to the bottom of the affair on her China trip.”

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