Britain wants Chinese money but fears that the Chinese only invest in Britain to subvert Britain and steal military and intelligence secrets, writes Mihir Bose
Napoleon Bonparte is supposed to have said, “China is a sleeping giant; let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world”. Many western leaders must wish China had not woken up. For China is shaking the world so much that western leaders cannot get their heads round what to do with China.
No western country’s China policy is in a bigger mess than that of Britain. It has gone from David Cameron a decade ago taking President Xi to his local pub for a drink, presumably thinking he was showing off popular British culture at its best, and talking of a golden era of Britain-China relationship, to the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Priti Patel, now saying, “Let’s be very honest. The Chinese don’t invest in the United Kingdom because they like us. They invest in our country to do us down and to do us harm.”
Such is the rage of the Tories towards China that even the very tentative steps taken by the Keir Starmer government to show they recognise that Britain cannot shun the second most powerful country in the world has seen Tory politicians fume. Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who is a noted critic of China, has warned that Labour’s policy means “They are going to sell this country into the hands of the Chinese”. Patel says, “Labour are just bending the knee and kowtowing to China.”
What this represents is the great contradiction of British policy. Britain wants Chinese money but fears that the Chinese only invest in Britain to subvert Britain and steal military and intelligence secrets. This was openly expressed by Parliament’s Intellgence and Security Committee report of 2023 which said, Britian is “on a trajectory for the nightmare scenario where China steals blueprints, sets standards and builds products, exerting political and economic influence at every step.”
Britain’s need for Chinese investment is well known. British universities require Chinese students for their funding and threat of students withdrawing has seen cutbacks at many universities. However Chinese students are still coming and show the tremendous Chinese influence. The halls of residence of some university colleges feel more like Beijing with signs in Mandarin. Liverpool University has a long-standing partnership with Xi’an Jiaotong University in China which, in 2006, led to the establishment of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Liverpool University’s website drools about this partnership saying, “The unique bond between the University of Liverpool and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University opens the door to life-changing opportunities.” However, critics argue that what it will do is change Britain with China helping itself to British secrets and subverting treasured British institutions.
The mess that is British policy towards China was well illustrated in April when the Starmer government, in a move taken only at the time of war, called Parliament to sit on a Saturday to pass emergency legislation to take control of British Steel. Jingye, the Chinese company, had been approached by the Conservative government in 2019 to take over British Steel after its previous owner, the private equity firm Greybull Capital had walked away. Since then, British Steel has lost more than £350m and Jingye said it would close the blast furnaces, turning down an offer of £500m in UK government support to switch from the polluting blast furnaces to cleaner electric arc furnaces. This threatened 2,700 jobs in Scunthorpe.
The Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, accused Jingye of not acting in good faith. He admitted the UK had “got it wrong in the past” about allowing Chinese investment in strategically important industries such as steel and highlighted the influence of the Chinese government on private companies. “I wouldn’t personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector.”
So, no chance then of Starmer buying President XI a drink in his local at Islington. Just as well since this would leave Prithi Patel speechless with anger, as the thought of the British Prime having a drink with the Chinese leader would be seen as worse than kowtowing to the Chinese.
The dispute over the future of the Scunthorpe furnaces further illustrated the mess of the government’s China policy as it came just as the Labour government has been seeking to boost inward investment. This had seen, three months before Reynolds denunciation of China, Rachel Reeves making a much-publicised visit to China.
All this against a background of some security experts raising concerns that using Chinese tech in European wind farms could even allow the owners to shut down crucial power supplies in the event of tensions with Beijing. This risk, said experts, had to be taken seriously. This had been made worse they say by the fact that U.K. and Europe had allowed China to double down on its supply chain dominance — and become indispensable to European energy security.
The basic problem is that the British have learnt nothing from their history with China while the Chinese clearly have. So, following what happened with British Steel one opinion maker wrote how would China react if Britain tried to buy its steel mines, control some of its water supply and get private details of its citizens health records. China would not like that. So, unless China gives Britain reciprocity Britain must adopt a policy of resistance.
What this ignores is that for more than a century Britain had far more rights in China than China has ever demanded or would demand. It started with Britain encouraging Chinese citizens to have opium. The Britain trade in opium was illicit and caused widespread social problems and economic hardship. The Chinese government attempted to suppress the trade leading to the opium wars. The British, with their superior naval power, won the war and forced China to sign the Treaty of Nanking.
This treaty gave Britain power far more extensive than simply controlling China’s water supply. China had to give Hong Kong to Britain, open five ports to foreign trade, and pay an indemnity. Britain also imposed humiliating conditions which saw Britain acquire concessions in China. This included parts of Shanghai being controlled by Britain where no Chinese could enter without British approval and the entrances for good measure guarded by Britain’s Indian troops. Imagine China demanding such rights in Scunthorpe.
China has not forgotten what happened calling it a century of humiliations and are determined to make sure they are not weak as their ancestors were. Its reaction to the British Steel controversy shows this.
China’s embassy in London said politicians objecting to the country’s involvement in the UK steel sector “took the opportunity to attack all Chinese companies and the Chinese government”. This was followed by a warning by the country’s foreign ministry against “politicising” the situation.
The Embassy in an unusual question-and-answer format wrote: “The anti-China rhetoric of some individual British politicians is extremely absurd, reflecting their arrogance, ignorance and twisted mindset.”
The point about ignorance is well made certainly as far as history is concerned of which most people in Britain have no knowledge. Back before Britain became a superpower China was the world’s superpower, with India ranked second. The historian Paul Kennedy in his splendid book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers has described the power of the Ming dynasty of China. In 1500 with a population of 100-130 million, compared to Europe’s 50-55 million, its power was so awesome that other countries quaked. Chinese ships made official overseas expeditions. The most famous of this was between 1405 and 1433 by Admiral Cheng Ho who, commanding hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of men, visited ports from Malacca and Ceylon to the Red Sea entrances and Zanzibar. They gave gifts to deferential local rulers who accepted that China was supreme. “But the Chinese expedition of 1433 was the last of the line, and three years later an imperial edict banned the construction of seagoing ships; later still a specific order forbade the existence of ships with more than two masts…Cheng Ho’s great warships were laid up and rotted away. Despite all the opportunities that beckoned overseas, Chian had decided to turn its back on the world”.
In the 21st century the XI Dynasty, unlike the Ming Dynasty, has no desire to turn its back on the world. Instead, it is doing the modern version of sending ships to faraway lands establishing Chinese influence. The west had better come to terms with this if it wants to establish viable relations with China.
(Mihir Bose is the author of Thank You Mr Crombie Lessons in Guilt and Gratitude to the British.)
