04 Dec How the Government can beat the bad headlines about China
Every so often, China dominates the headlines, and then it does not. In November, news broke that MI5 had shared guidance to parliamentarians and staffers about China’s espionage efforts in Parliament. In October, the collapse and resultant fallout of the alleged ‘spy case’ led to bitter politicking between the Government and Opposition and extensive discussions about the nature of the UK-China relationship, before the conversation moved on. The same thing happened in April, when Ministers intervened to take control of British Steel from its Chinese owners when it became clear that the UK’s steel production capability was in serious jeopardy.
These events illustrate how, despite the size and heft of China, the country still occupies a confusingly niche and transient space in UK policy discussions. Attitudes to China are often polarised within the relatively narrow space of those focusing on it, and successive UK Governments have failed to develop a proactive vision for the UK’s relationship with China. This leaves us ill-equipped to respond when major challenges surface with increasing regularity.
The paradox of the relationship was encapsulated in the Prime Minister’s recent speech at the Lady Mayor’s Banquet, in which the Prime Minister both argued that trade and engagement with China are vital to the UK’s national interest and acknowledged that China “poses real national security threats to the United Kingdom”. This aligns with remarks other Ministers have made about China since the election, but does not address the fundamental lack of a defined vision for UK-China relations.
This lack of vision has led to unexplained overcaution around provoking China. The Government’s postponement on a decision on China’s proposed ‘Super Embassy’ development at Royal Mint Court, and refusal to include China on the upper, enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), are two such examples of this. This caution and indecision would appear to suggest concerns over the economic leverage China holds over the UK, but it is unclear how such leverage would be used, and crucially, how the Government is planning to reduce it. This apparent leverage was not employed when the UK announced that it would prise Huawei out of its 5G networks in 2020, or when the UK was sanctioning Chinese officials in 2021 and making and endorsing successive United Nations statements about China’s human rights record in 2022. Indeed, UK exports to China increased between 2020 and 2022.
China itself has changed since then, and has a newfound readiness to instrumentalise its monopoly on key resources, as seen in its response to tariffs from the United States. However, it is unlikely that policy decisions such as including China on the FIRS would meet the threshold for such punitive retaliation. Dr Francesca Ghiretti, Director of the RAND Europe China Initiative, argues that “Beijing’s willingness and ability to impose crippling costs on third countries is frequently overstated,” and that “Beijing is unlikely to leverage the entirety of UK’s dependencies at once”.[1] Dr Ghiretti further cautions against deepening engagement as a means of reducing risk in the relationship, arguing that “a country worried about China’s economic leverage over its sovereignty should focus on reducing that leverage by managing existing and future economic links, especially in critical sectors, rather than creating additional vulnerabilities.”
As others have highlighted, our trade with China could never be considered so valuable as to justify weakening national security, and there are few compelling examples of where rebuke against China has manifestly harmed the UK’s economy. Furthermore, it will not have gone unnoticed in Beijing that its recent export controls on minerals have in fact galvanised other countries’ efforts to diversify away from China; further weaponisation of these monopolies could risk China losing more trade and influence down the line, and so it is likely to be more strategic about how it uses these advantages in future.
It may also be tempting to look with concern at China’s ongoing recriminations against Japan over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments about Taiwan, which are largely being exacted through economic restrictions against Japan. But there is little comparison to be made between this case and the UK’s situation. The China-Japan dispute is about a head of government-level intervention over Taiwan, with Taiwan being one of China’s four ‘red lines’ to which it is particularly sensitive. The current primary concerns in the UK, such as Chinese state-backed interference, fall far short of this level. And, despite Japan having apparently crossed a ‘red line,’ China has not instrumentalised export controls in the way that it did following the United States’ imposition of heavy tariffs. The UK, then, does not need to be as fearful as it consistently is about the economic consequences of standing up to China over key security concerns.
The Government’s apparent unwillingness to take steps to protect the UK from Chinese Government interference becomes even more confusing in light of the UK’s reported decision to suspend intelligence sharing with the United States in the Caribbean over concerns of US strikes on civilian vessels.[2] The specifics of the decision notwithstanding, the UK’s willingness to endanger relations with its largest single trading partner and primary military ally is a sharp contrast to its unwillingness to provoke China over comparatively minor policy decisions. The UK’s relationships do not lie along simple binaries – we can act to hold allies accountable just as we can act to insulate ourselves against threats, without such decisions defining the entirety of a relationship. One does not have to be a ‘China hawk’ to support strengthening our approaches to national security.
This prevailing nervousness and lack of vision means that the China policy conversation in the UK has remained on safe ground for too long, lingering on the exceptionally worn out issue of ‘China capabilities’. That one of the primary (public) conclusions of the China Audit was that we simply do not understand China well enough should be of major concern. Talking about capabilities is policy comfort food: it acknowledges the complexity of the issue, but postpones actually tackling hard but unavoidable questions around what our relationship with China should look like. There is no defined period at which we will be sufficiently ‘China capable’ to address these questions. Building capacity should be a means of delivering a strategy; it is not a strategy in and of itself.
And while we are stuck focused on ‘capabilities’ and failing to create a proactive vision, a vacuum is being created for the politicisation of China issues in the UK. The collapse of the alleged ‘spy case,’ swiftly led to political mudslinging, with the Government condemning the previous Conservative Government’s failure to properly characterise China, and the now-opposition Conservatives reciprocating.
Allowing these issues to become captured by political theatre diverts attention from real security questions, and risks the Government having to support unwise or unclear policy decisions while on the political defensive. To be ahead of future political spats over China, the Government should be more proactive in publicising the specific steps it is taking to compete with and challenge China on key issues, two of the key pillars of Labour’s manifesto position on China which, to date, have seen little articulation beyond broad statements about increasing the capabilities of the security services. Laying out more concrete step would take much political heat out of the China issue, while helping to challenge accusations that the Government is not serious about the national security threats and human rights concerns arising from China.
Heading into December, the Government has announced yet another postponement around its decision on China’s application to develop Royal Mint Court into its proposed ‘Super Embassy’. This drew predictable rebuke from Chinese government spokespeople, and the eventual final decision will doubtless rouse intense media scrutiny and political attacks. However, it could also be a springboard for a concrete vision for UK-China relations, if the Government seizes the moment to lay out a genuine strategy and break with years of indecision.
[1] Interview with author
[2] The Foreign Secretary downplayed but did not officially deny these reports.
