The government is under pressure from MI5 to designate China a threat to national security, after an alleged spy with links to the Duke of York was identified yesterday. The security service has previously said that Beijing is engaged in spying on an "epic scale", with espionage a "central component of its national strategy".

What does Chinese spying include?
For years, Beijing has sought to use "every means and medium of intelligence-gathering at its disposal against the West", said historian Calder Walton on Foreign Policy. "Its strategy can be summarised in three words: collect, collect, collect." It gathers vast amounts of data from "government websites, parliamentarians, universities, think tanks and human rights organisations", while also targeting "diaspora groups and individuals", said Nigel Inkster in The Spectator.

Led by the nominally civilian Ministry of State Security, which is responsible for domestic security, counter-espionage and collecting foreign intelligence, China has, over the past 20 years, "deepened its cyber capabilities, while building on old-fashioned human intelligence operations".

How widespread is the network?
China's intelligence agencies "appear to have fewer constraints" than they once did about "recruiting foreigners and using techniques such as honey-traps", said The Spectator. Even foreign students in China are being approached "in the hope that they can, in time, be manoeuvred into positions of influence within their home countries". In October last year, MI5 said more than 20,000 people in the UK had been approached by Chinese spies online "over professional networking sites like LinkedIn, in order to try to cultivate them to provide sensitive information", said the BBC.

You could argue this is just par for the course for any major power with global ambitions – the US, the UK and others have been doing this for decades. But China's intelligence services operate in a "fundamentally different way from those in the West – in nature, scope and scale", said Foreign Policy.

What is China's end game?
Some of the work of the Ministry of State Security focuses on monitoring and suppressing anti-regime activity and actors. But increasingly it is focused on extracting information from foreign governments, individuals and businesses. The Chinese Communist Party's "tentacles are everywhere," said The Telegraph in an editorial in March, "seeking to siphon up cutting-edge technology and interfering in the democratic political processes of dozens of countries".

Indian teenager Gukesh Dommaraju has become the youngest ever world chess champion, deepening the "love affair between Indians and chess", said The Hindu.

Chess has been "around for millennia" and is "generally believed to have originated in India". Now, the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu is producing a host of national champions, including 18-year-old Dommaraju.

Wizards and geniuses
The "poker-faced, lanky teen" is part of "the latest crop" of chess "wizards" that the southern Indian state has "churned out" over the last 10 years, said Al Jazeera. The state has produced 31 grandmasters out of 85 in all of India, and even has a temple for the sport in the Tiruvarur district.

The "glory that has embraced Indian chess in recent years is rooted in humble beginnings, defined by sacrifice and dedication" at the city's schools and academies, where "dreams are forged" and then "shaped for success". The Velammal Nexus school in Chennai, where many of the game's "young trailblazers" have attended, has an exclusive chess academy, where 56-year-old Velavan Subbiah is building a "pipeline of chess geniuses".

Children as young as three are forming a new generation that has "helped spread" the game's popularity "even to remote villages". The academy's boys and girls are now enjoying celebrity status. They "get recognised and mobbed in every corner of the state".

Going stratospheric 
The broader culture of Chennai is helping to bolster this trend. It's a "socially conservative" city, said Al Jazeera, and many of the city's parents regard chess as a "brainy" hobby that helps their children focus on their studies.

The policies of the state government have also supported chess. There are cash prizes for winners, and international chess events have been held in Tamil Nadu.

Wider geopolitical events have played their part, too. The 2022 Chess Olympiad was supposed to be held in Russia, but it was moved from Khanty-Mansiysk and awarded to Chennai following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The success of the tournament, said The Hindu, helped India's chess profile go "stratospheric".

Sit back and relax with our pick of the best of the big day's small-screen entertainment.

Swan Lake from English National Ballet
At lunchtime on Christmas Day, you can catch a recording of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake", performed at the Royal Albert Hall in June. The "most memorable element" of this "naturally grand-scale piece of work" is the "corps of 60 swan maidens manoeuvring their melancholy way through some mesmeric – almost militaristic – formations", said The Times.

Tiddler
Starting with "The Gruffalo" in 2009, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler have regularly had their much-loved children's books turned into animated BBC specials. This Christmas, it's the turn of "Tiddler" – the tale of a "small grey fish with a big imagination". It "boasts a star-studded cast", said Radio Times, with Hannah Waddingham of "Ted Lasso" fame "taking the lead as the narrator".

Doctor Who: Joy to the World
Nicola ("Bridgerton") Coughlan, as new character Joy, joins lead star Ncuti Gatwa for this seasonal Doctor Who special. With an old enemy "lurking in the wings" and "all of human history" hanging in the balance, said the BBC, "can the Doctor save Christmas, everywhere, all at once?"

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
It's been 16 years since their last adventure, and Wallace and Gromit (and Feathers McGraw) are making a "joyous return", said The Guardian. The storyline for the latest stop-motion animated comedy, created by Nick Park, "chimes with our current anxieties around technology".

Gavin & Stacey: The Finale
This final, "hugely anticipated" return of the much-loved sitcom will "pick up from the cliffhanger ending of the 2019 special", when Nessa (Ruth Jones) asked Smithy (James Corden) to marry her, said The Sun. What's occurring? There's only one way to find out…

Church's real scandal is its spiritual collapse
Melanie Phillips in The Times
The pressure on the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, to stand down "after falling to remove" a vicar who was a "serial child sex abuser" follows the "enforced resignation" of the Archbishop of Canterbury, writes Melanie Phillips. Something "systemic" is "at work here", a "sustained" and moral "failure" to take abuses "seriously enough". But "surely what the church needs to safeguard above all" is "biblical observance" because it has failed to "fill the spiritual void" that has developed in a "post-truth” society.

Labour seems to be flailing, but keep faith: Starmer's long-term plans are both radical and sound
Polly Toynbee in The Guardian
This "solemn and serious" government is "not one for quick, bright eye-catchers" and "the best it does may only emerge in years ahead", writes Polly Toynbee. Failure to achieve its goals risks a "dangerous loss of trust" in government, "opening the floodgates of nihilism to any passing demagogue". But "to use a Churchillism", the cabinet "will 'keep buggering on' through their dire legacy" towards their "exceptionally difficult aspirations".

The case for school uniforms is compelling
Stephen Bush in the Financial Times
If "implemented sensibly", a school uniform can have "a useful equalising effect in the classroom", writes Stephen Bush. It can ensure "no child is easily marked out" due to their "inability to afford the latest fashions or a popular item of clothing". Uniforms are "a liberating way" of letting pupils "feel as if they are part of a group", and helps to "blur", if not "eradicate", some of "the differences between them".