Since 2018, the United States has been tightening its laws to prevent its rivals from buying into its sensitive sectors – blocking investments in everything from semiconductors to telecommunications.

But the rules weren't always so strict.

In 2016, Jeff Stein, a veteran journalist covering the US intelligence community, got a tip-off: a small insurance company that specialised in selling liability insurance to FBI and CIA agents had been sold to a Chinese entity.

"Someone with direct knowledge called me up and said, 'Do you know that the insurance company that insures intelligence personnel is owned by the Chinese?'" he remembers. "I was astonished!"

In 2015, the insurer, Wright USA, had been quietly purchased by Fosun Group, a private company believed to have very close connections with China's leadership.

US concerns became immediately clear: Wright USA was privy to the personal details of many of America's top secret service agents and intelligence officials. No one in the US knew who might have access to that information now the insurer and its parent, Ironshore, were Chinese-owned.

Wright USA wasn't an isolated case.

The BBC has exclusive early access to brand new data that shows how Chinese state money has been flowing into wealthy countries, buying up assets in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Australia.

In the past couple of decades China has become the world's biggest overseas investor, giving it the potential to dominate sensitive industries, secrets and key technologies. Beijing considers the details of its foreign spending overseas – how much money it's spending and where - to be a state secret.

But on the terms of the Wright USA sale, Stein says: "There was nothing illegal about it; it was in the open, so to speak. But because everything's intertwined so closely in Beijing, you're essentially giving that [information] up to Chinese intelligence."

The Chinese government was involved in the deal: fresh data seen by the BBC reveals that four Chinese state banks had provided a $1.2bn (£912m) loan, routed through the Cayman Islands, to allow Fosun to buy Wright USA.

Stein's story ran in Newsweek magazine. And there was a swift reaction in Washington: triggering an inquiry by the branch of the US Treasury that screens investments, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Shortly after, the company was sold again - back to Americans. It's unclear who ordered that sale.

Fosun and Starr Wright USA, the company that now owns Wright USA, did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

High-level US intelligence sources confirm the Wright USA sale was one of the cases that led the first Trump administration to tighten its investment laws in 2018.

Very few could have understood at the time that this Chinese state-backed spending appears to have been part of a much bigger strategy carried out by Beijing to invest and buy assets in every continent.

"For many years, we assumed that virtually all of China's money flows were going to developing countries," says Brad Parks, executive director of AidData. "And so, it came as a great surprise to us when we realised that actually there were hundreds of billions of dollars going into places like the US, the UK and Germany, happening right underneath our noses."

AidData is a research lab based in Virginia that specialises in tracking how governments spend their money outside their borders. It's based at William & Mary, one of America's oldest universities and it gets its funding from governments and charitable organisations around the world. For the past 12 years, AidData has had a major focus on China.

A four-year effort involving 120 researchers has led to the first known effort to tally all of China's state-backed investments around the world. The group's entire dataset is available open source although the BBC was given exclusive advance access.

AidData's key discovery: since 2000, Beijing has spent $2.1 trillion outside its borders, with a roughly equal split between developing and wealthy countries.

"China has a kind of financial system that the world has never seen," says Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Centre at University of California San Diego. China has the largest banking system in the world – larger than the US, Europe and Japan put together, he adds.

That size, along with the amount of control Beijing exerts over state banks, gives it unique capabilities.

"The government controls interest rates and directs where the credit goes," Mr Shih says. "This is only possible with very strict capital control, which no other country could have on a sustainable basis."

Some of the investments in wealthy economies appear to have been made in order to generate a healthy return. Others fall in line with Beijing's strategic objectives, set out a decade ago in a major government initiative called Made in China 2025.

In it the Chinese authorities outlined a clear plan to dominate 10 cutting-edge industries, like robotics, electric vehicles and semiconductors by this year.

Beijing wanted to fund big investments abroad so key technologies could be brought back to China.

Global alarm at the plan led China to drop public mention of it, but Victor Shih says it "stayed very much alive" as a guiding strategy.

"There are all kinds of plans still being published," he says, "including an artificial intelligence plan and a smart manufacturing plan. However, the mother of all plans is the 15th five-year plan."

At a key meeting of the Communist Party last month, China's leaders set the goal of accelerating "high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement" until 2030.

AidData's new database highlights state-backed spending overseas that matches the 10 sectors targeted in 2015. The BBC's earlier reporting detailed how the Chinese government bankrolled the purchase of a UK semiconductor company.

The United States, the UK and many other major economies have tightened their investment screening mechanisms after each country appears to have been caught off-guard by deals like the sale of the insurer, Wright USA.

AidData's Brad Parks says wealthy governments didn't realise at first that Chinese investments in each country were part of Beijing's larger strategy.

"At first blush, they thought it was just a lot of individual initiative from Chinese companies," he says. "I think what they've learned over time is that actually Beijing's party state is behind the scenes writing the cheques to make this happen."

However, it must be underlined that such investments and purchases are legal, even if they are sometimes obscured within shell companies or routed through offshore accounts.

"The Chinese government has always required Chinese enterprises operating overseas to strictly comply with local laws and regulations, and has consistently supported them in conducting international co-operation based on mutual benefit," the Chinese embassy in London told the BBC.

"Chinese companies not only provide quality products and services to people around the world, but also contribute actively to local economic growth, social development and job creation."

China's spending patterns are changing, the AidData database shows, with Beijing's state money flowing to countries that have decided to welcome Chinese investment.

In the Netherlands there's been debate around Nexperia, a troubled Chinese-owned semiconductor company.

It shows up in the AidData database too – Chinese state banks loaned $800m to help a Chinese consortium acquire Nexperia in 2017. Two years later, the ownership passed to another Chinese company - Wingtech.

Nexperia's strategic value was highlighted when the Dutch authorities took control of the company's operations in September - in part, the Dutch government said, over concerns that Nexperia's technology was at risk of being transferred to other parts of the larger Wingtech company.

That bold move had resulted in Nexperia effectively being cut into two – separating Dutch operations from its Chinese manufacturing.

Nexperia confirmed to the BBC that its Chinese business had stopped operating within Nexperia's governance framework and was ignoring instructions.

The company said it welcomed China's commitment to resuming exports of its critical chips to global markets.

Xioaxue Martin, a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, says many in the Netherlands were surprised at how the government handled the case, since they've always managed their relationship with China carefully in the past.

"We're a country that has always done very well with open trade, free trade. And this is really the merchant side of Dutch policy," she says. "Only recently we found that actually, hold on - geopolitics makes it necessary to have more industrial policy, to have this investment screening, when in the past there wasn't that much attention for this."

Xiaoxue Martin is clear – it's easy to go too far down the path of fearing what could happen as a result of doing so much business with a superpower like China.

"There's a danger of making it seem as if China is this monolith, that they all want the same thing, and that they're all out to get Europe, and to get the United States, when obviously that's not the case," she says.

"Most companies, especially if they're private, they just want to make money. They want to be treated as a normal company. They don't want to have this negative reception that they're getting in Europe."

If China is so far ahead of its rivals in its plans to buy into sensitive sectors, does that mean the race to dominate these arenas is already over?

"No! There's gonna be multiple laps," maintains Brad Parks. "There are many Chinese companies that are still trying to make these types of acquisitions. The difference is, now they're facing higher levels of scrutiny to vet these inbound sources of foreign capital.

"So China makes its move. China is not the follower any more, it is the leader. It is the pace setter. But what I'm anticipating is that many G7 countries are going to move from the back foot to the front foot.

"They're going to move from defence to offence."

This is part of the Global Women series from the BBC World Service, sharing extraordinary interviews and stories from around the globe.

"I hated that I looked Asian, that I didn't have blue eyes and blonde hair, because that's what was beautiful at the time," says Arden Cho, the actress who voiced Rumi, star of Netflix's chart-topping animated film, KPop Demon Hunters.

Cho, 40, is describing her childhood in Texas, as the eldest daughter of Korean immigrant parents and her struggle for acceptance in American society.

In the film, which tells the story of a female K-Pop trio who must save the world from evil forces, Rumi has to come to terms with her identity as part human, part demon - and when Cho first read the script this resonated powerfully.

"Being born in America, feeling American but having people treat me like I'm not, trying to figure out my identity as an Asian-American, as a Korean-American, as a woman," she says.

These were all elements of her early life that mirrored Rumi's journey.

"I can honestly say that at different points in my life, I hated a lot of myself and I wanted to be someone else.

"As kids, what you see shapes who you become and I feel like I just didn't see enough people that look like me."

When it launched on Netflix in June, KPop Demon Hunters registered 33 million views in just two weeks, and reached the top 10 of the Netflix charts in 93 countries. To star in the first Hollywood animated film set in Korea, with Korean leads, was for Cho "a dream come true" – but it has also made her a powerful role model for Asian-American children, of the kind that she lacked when she was young.

Cho says many Korean-Americans have told her it's "such a refreshing moment", making them proud for the first time of their dual heritage and culture.

"I feel like K-Pop really, truly, has paved the way. K-beauty has had such a big impact on Korea being loved. But I feel like this movie is the one that tipped it over the edge of, everybody wants to go to Korea, now," Cho says.

But the film's success was not guaranteed and Cho says she felt the team making it were "sometimes facing an uphill battle".

"I feel like it kind of sucks to say this, but any time there's an Asian-led project, people feel like it's a risk," she says.

So, when she took on the role, she made an effort to meet everyone working on the film in person, she says.

The film was released against the backdrop of increased immigration raids in the US as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation effort, which sparked protests in many states.

As an Asian-American living in the US "it's heartbreaking and disappointing," says Cho. "Immigrants have made America what it is."

Korean news sources have estimated that up to 150,000 Korean immigrants without proper documentation, including adopted children, are among those who could be deported.

As an adult, Cho came to realise that the racism she had experienced when she was younger stemmed mainly from a lack of education, as people didn't know what it meant to be Korean or Asian.

"But now in this day and age, when I feel like the world and people should know better, it is beyond disappointing and sometimes I feel like we feel so hopeless," she says.

Because of this, it feels very special, she says, that KPop Demon Hunters could bring "hope and joy and love to all these different communities".

"Maybe that's why it's sort of like this movie of the summer, because we just needed some hope and something to unite us all together."

The growth of AI is a major concern for the film industry, raising the possibility that in future it could be used to make a film like KPop Demon Hunters.

Cho says she is aware that AI is already being used to replicate actors' voices, but wants to "have hope in humanity" that people will still seek out art created by humans.

"Sure, I'm sure they're going to have AI actors and singers. I know they already exist. I know our voices are already being manipulated, but I hope people have some respect and want and love for something real."

KPop Demon Hunters has also been dominating the global music charts, with seven tracks from its soundtrack featured on the Billboard Hot 100. It has its own fan art, and audiences around the world are demanding a sequel.

Cho tells us she wishes she could answer the question of whether that will happen - but both she and fans will have to wait for Netflix or Sony Pictures Entertainment, which made the film, to give it the green light.

"I know there's lots of murmurs, I've heard wonderful things," she says. "So we shall see, and I think everyone in the world would riot if there wasn't."

• Starting conversations, building connections and challenging misinformation through features, investigations, interviews and extraordinary stories

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has defended sweeping changes to the UK's asylum system, telling MPs the current situation is "out of control and unfair".

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mahmood said: "If we fail to deal with this crisis, we will draw more people down a path that starts with anger and ends in hatred."

Under the plans, refugee status will become temporary, guaranteed housing support for asylum seekers will end and new capped "safe and legal routes" into the UK will be created.

Some Labour MPs expressed concerns, with Nadia Whittome calling the plans "dystopian" and "shameful", but the Conservatives gave the measures a cautious welcome.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the proposals were "positive baby steps". However, she warned that unless the UK left the European Convention on Human Rights, Mahmood's efforts would be "doomed to fail".

Badenoch urged the home secretary to work with the Conservatives, saying she may find their votes would "come in handy" if Labour backbenchers did not support the changes.

Over the past year, the government has been forced to backtrack on some of its policies - including cuts to welfare and the winter fuel payment - after objections from its own MPs.

So far, around 20 Labour MPs have criticised the plans. Whittome, the MP for Nottingham East, accused the government of "ripping up the rights and protections of people who've endured imaginable trauma".

Folkstone MP and immigration lawyer Tony Vaughan said making refugee status temporary would create a "situation of perpetual limbo and alienation".

Richard Burgon said the measures were "morally wrong" and would "push away Labour voters".

"Why not recognise that now rather than in another few months and have to make a U-turn," the MP for Leeds East said.

Other Labour MPs expressed support for Mahmood. Chris Murray told BBC Radio 5 Live the system had to be fair "otherwise it'll collapse, and there's nothing progressive about letting that happen".

MP for Blackley and Middleton South, Graham Stringer, said the home secretary was "going down the right track".

He said she would reach a "compromise" with Labour MPs but added: "It might all be for naught if we don't get out of the European Convention on Human Rights."

So far this year 111,800 people have claimed asylum in the UK - 39% arrived in a small boat, while 37% arrived by legal means before claiming asylum.

The government says its plans are aimed at reducing the number of people coming to the UK and increasing removals of people who do not have a legal right to be in the country.

The Home Office published the changes in a 30-page document and a few hours later Mahmood presented them to the House of Commons.

Under the proposals, people granted refugee status will only be allowed to stay in the country temporarily, with their status reviewed every 30 months - half the current time period.

People could be returned to their home country, when it is deemed safe to do so.

The amount of time refugees will have to be in the UK before being allowed to apply for permanent residence will be quadrupled from five years to 20.

Families with children who have been refused asylum will be offered incentives to leave but could be forcibly removed if they refuse to go voluntarily.

Asylum seekers with income or assets would have to contribute to the cost of their stay in the UK.

Mahmood told MPs this would "end the absurdity where an asylum seeker receiving £800 a month from his family and an Audi was receiving free housing at the taxpayer's expense and the courts judged we could do nothing about it".

The Home Office has pushed back against suggestions asylum seekers could have their jewellery confiscated to pay for their accommodation.

In order to make it easier to remove failed asylum seekers, the government intends to change the way the European Convention of Human Rights and Modern Slavery Act is applied.

Mahmood also threatened to stop granting visas to people from three African countries - Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia - unless those governments improved co-operation on deportations.

Setting out her plans for capped safe and legal routes, Mahmood said voluntary and community organisations would be given "greater involvement" in receiving and supporting new arrivals.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Max Wilkinson welcomed the introduction of new safe and legal routes but accused the home secretary of "stoking division by using immoderate language".

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage praised Mahmood's "strong language" and suggested she was auditioning to join his party.

However, he said he had "serious doubts" her plans would survive objections from Labour backbenchers or the European Court of Human Rights.

Enver Solomon of the Refugee Council charity said tightening the system would not deter people "fleeing for their lives".

He said people were not coming to the UK because of the asylum rules but because they spoke English or had familial ties or community connections in the country.

"We have those communities because of our historical links and our past history as a big colonial nation," he added.

For 20 years the Home Office has been blighted with regular and well-documented failures to manage asylum seekers.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's massive plan is unprecedented. And the legal and policy strategy marks an enormous change in thinking.

In short, the government wants to move from thinking about "duties" the Home Office must fulfil to what "powers" it really needs to take and use to get a grip on the situation.

Given ministers want to do this without demolishing constitutional safeguards such as the Human Rights Act, it is a tightrope.

At the heart of this plan - which sits alongside the slowly evolving "smash the gangs" project - is a massive reform of what refugee status leads to.

At the moment, anyone accepted for protection is basically here for life, if they choose.

Future applicants will enter a temporary system of safety called "Core Protection".

A refugee would get a minimum 30 months of permission to live in the UK before it is reviewed. Putting aside the logistical question of how the Home Office will find the resources to constantly check up on people, the aim is to encourage people to go home if conditions improve. How that works in practice as people get jobs and their children grow up with the UK their only secure home, is not clear.

But even if their homeland remains unstable, a refugee will not be allowed to permanently settle for 20 years - unless they "earn" a short cut through work or study.

On top of that, the government wants to cut financial support to asylum seekers (currently £49 per week) if they hold eligibility to work. That's about 20,000 people. Others will be told to sell assets to pay for their upkeep - although officials are trying to avoid the PR optics of the controversial Danish policy of taking jewellery off people.

Families who have been rejected for asylum may ultimately lose their financial support to encourage them to leave.

But laws applying in all parts of the UK are absolutely explicit that a child cannot be left "in need". It's just a no-go zone for the government. So how removing support from an asylum family squares with that cornerstone safeguard remains to be seen.

At the moment there are about 700 Albanian families in the UK with no right to be here but the Home Office has chosen not to prioritise sending them home. Past plans to remove asylum families have been really knotty - and it was a huge point of tension within the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of 15 years ago.

The next stage of the plan - and this will not happen overnight - is to change how asylum decisions are taken.

Officials who have studied the Danish system say they are planning a similar single appeal system that can speed up the whole process and be fairer.

But past attempts at asylum "fast track" decision-making have been torn apart in the courts because they were rushed and found to be grossly unfair.

If the Home Office is going to get it right this time, it will require an astonishing amount of focus that has eluded it before.

The plan to impose on British courts a tight interpretation of the right to family life, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, is a key ingredient of the package. The aim is to show that the UK can maintain human rights safeguards that are baked into our messy constitution while also ending immigration abuse.

Evidence of abuse of human rights laws in the courts is not immediately apparent. We are still waiting for the Home Office to come up with some detailed statistics on how rights like family life are used in legal challenges.

But, nevertheless, Parliament will be asked to approve wording for how judges should balance the right to a private and family life and the public interest in removing someone from the UK.

What makes a family? Well the government plans to legally restrict the definition to "immediate" family.

All of this will need to be watertight to prevent a clash with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg where complaints might be lodged that the UK has gone too far.

Such a clash is not a given. The court must take into account local circumstances and the UK rarely loses at the court, and almost never on immigration related issues.

All of this is going to take time to get right and there are two massive warnings from history if ministers get it wrong.

The first is the Windrush scandal. So far, the Home Office has coughed up more than £116m in compensation to people whose lives were turned upside down by being wrongly labelled as illegal immigrants under the former government's "hostile environment" policies.

The second warning? There have been times in European history when the public has lost confidence in how society works - and turned to strong men with easy and angry answers.

The risk today, believe ministers, is the illegal immigration problem has been so poorly managed, for so long, that British traditions and values of offering protection to the truly vulnerable are in danger.

One government insider said this may be the last chance for mainstream politicians to grip this problem and solve it.

The UN Security Council has voted in favour of a US-drafted resolution, which endorses Donald Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza.

Included in the plan is the establishment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which the US says multiple unnamed countries have offered to contribute to.

The resolution was backed by 13 countries - including the UK, France and Somalia - with none voting against the proposal. Russia and China abstained.

Hamas has rejected the resolution, saying it fails to meet Palestinians' rights and demands.

The plan "imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people and their factions reject," the group said on Telegram.

"Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation," it added.

According to reports on the latest draft, part of the ISF's role would be to work on the "permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups" - including Hamas - as well as protecting civilians and humanitarian aid routes.

This would require Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, to hand over its weapons - something it is meant to do under Trump's peace plan.

As well as authorising an ISF, which it says would work with Israel and Egypt - Gaza's southern neighbour - the draft also calls for creation of a newly trained Palestinian police in Gaza.

Until now, the police there have operated under the authority of Hamas.

Mike Waltz, the US's ambassador to the UN, told the Council that the ISF would be "tasked with securing the area, supporting the demilitarization of Gaza, dismantling the terrorist infrastructure, removing weapons, and ensuring the safety of Palestinian civilians".

The initial phase of the plan - a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the handing over of hostages and detainees - came into force on 10 October. Waltz described it as a "fragile, fragile first step".

The ISF is a central plank of Trump's plan which also includes establishing a so-called Board of Peace, which the US president himself is expected to head.

Financing for reconstruction of Gaza following two years of war would come from a trust fund backed by the World Bank, according to the resolution.

The draft also raises the possibility of a Palestinian state - something Israel strongly opposes. A path to future statehood was included following pressure from key Arab states.

Trump's peace plan in effect suspended the fighting between Israel and Hamas which had raged since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage in that attack.

More than 69,483 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The UN Security Council has voted in favour of a US-drafted resolution, which endorses Donald Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza.

Included in the plan is the establishment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which the US says multiple unnamed countries have offered to contribute to.

The resolution was backed by 13 countries - including the UK, France and Somalia - with none voting against the proposal. Russia and China abstained.

Hamas has rejected the resolution, saying it fails to meet Palestinians' rights and demands.

The plan "imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people and their factions reject," the group said on Telegram.

"Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation," it added.

According to reports on the latest draft, part of the ISF's role would be to work on the "permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups" - including Hamas - as well as protecting civilians and humanitarian aid routes.

This would require Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, to hand over its weapons - something it is meant to do under Trump's peace plan.

As well as authorising an ISF, which it says would work with Israel and Egypt - Gaza's southern neighbour - the draft also calls for creation of a newly trained Palestinian police in Gaza.

Until now, the police there have operated under the authority of Hamas.

Mike Waltz, the US's ambassador to the UN, told the Council that the ISF would be "tasked with securing the area, supporting the demilitarization of Gaza, dismantling the terrorist infrastructure, removing weapons, and ensuring the safety of Palestinian civilians".

The initial phase of the plan - a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the handing over of hostages and detainees - came into force on 10 October. Waltz described it as a "fragile, fragile first step".

The ISF is a central plank of Trump's plan which also includes establishing a so-called Board of Peace, which the US president himself is expected to head.

Financing for reconstruction of Gaza following two years of war would come from a trust fund backed by the World Bank, according to the resolution.

The draft also raises the possibility of a Palestinian state - something Israel strongly opposes. A path to future statehood was included following pressure from key Arab states.

Trump's peace plan in effect suspended the fighting between Israel and Hamas which had raged since Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage in that attack.

More than 69,483 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.