HONG KONG, July 5: A major outpost for foreign and Chinese spies, the British military is shipping out its intelligence operations from Hong Kong, but analysts say the handover is unlikely to reduce Hong Kong's role in asia as a hotbed of western spying operations.

Hong Kong is one of Britain's largest spying outpost, and the departing colonial power is not alone in having major spying operations here. Even since the communists took over on the mainland in 1949, heralding periods of isolation from the west, Hong Kong has been the main listening post for western and Asian countries trying to make sense of the secretive Communist giant.

According to China's former top official to Hong Kong Xu Jiatun, the US, Britain and Taiwan all had extensive intelligence operations in Hong Kong. China had as many as 6,000 agents here in the 1980s, Xu said in his memoirs.

Foreign intelligence services gathered information through Honk Kong groups and individuals. ``There is a relationship between foreign intelligence activities in Honk Kong and the motive to subvert Chinese authority,''Xu said, adding,``No foreign government is going to give up such activities in Homg Kong. We have to admit that they exist.''

The former controller of Britian's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) also known as the M 16 spy network, Baroness Park said publicly at the end of 1993 that the British intelligence organisation viewed China as a ``major target'' and that Hong Kong was an extremely important spy station.

In particular SIS specialised in monitoring weapons of mass destruction, including China's sale of M-9 and M-11 missiles to Pakistan which has caused tension in the Sino-US relationship in recent years.

Nowadays the British have particularly close links with the US National Security Agency (NSA) which monitors the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

This includes faxes, telephones, fibre-optics, computer networks, satellite and cellular systems.