What kind of relationship should Britain have with China? Is it ever okay to do business with members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Should Chinese students be welcomed, even if they espouse the CCP’s talking points on campus? Is investment from Chinese tech firms the same as from fast fashion giants?
These are some of the most difficult questions looming over the UK-China relationship. Successive governments have tried their own approaches, and the speed with which the UK has oscillated between extremes would be laughable if the issue wasn’t so serious.
In just 15 years, we’ve travelled from the Cameron-Osborne golden era, to Liz Truss’s promise to declare China a “threat”, and back to somewhere in the middle now. Throughout much of it, politicians have been reactive rather than proactive, fighting fires as they come.
In this environment, I have some sympathy for the latest disgrace that Prince Andrew has found himself in. Not so long ago, few would have batted an eyelid over a business partnership with a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
After all, then-Prime Minister David Cameron literally set the example by having a pint with the general secretary of that party. It’s been reported that it was around that time – the height of the golden era fantasy – that Prince Andrew first met Yang Tengbo in 2012.
Since then, the crackdown in Hong Kong, the pandemic, and horrors of Xinjiang have all soured the UK-China relationship and made Brits think twice about engaging with the Communist superpower.
For its part, China has continued to probe and poke at British democracy. The heads of MI6 and the CIA jointly warned this year that “the rise of China is the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century”. Last year, the MI5 chief revealed that more than 20,000 people in the UK have been contacted by disguised agents of China’s Ministry of State Security. China is most likely behind the 2022 mega-hack of the Electoral Commission, affecting 40 million voters’ records.
Next year, the former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash will go to trial under the Official Secrets Act, accused of sharing sensitive materials with the Chinese government. Chinese espionage tries to secure sensitive political, technological or business intelligence, and often relies on a high volume of attempts in the hopes that something sticks.
In this environment, it’s no wonder that the partnership between Prince Andrew and Yang Tengbo now seems like a bad hangover from the haze of the golden era. Even though Yang is not accused of being a spy in the traditional sense, if MI5 is right, he was an agent of the United Front Work Department’s “influence operations”, which try to create influential sympathisers to China and the Party. This kind of relationship might have been acceptable 10 years ago, but subtly, the rules have changed.
My sympathy for Andrew isn’t because I endorse the golden era’s naivety – I don’t. Rather, it’s because nobody knows where the new red lines lie, not even elected politicians, let alone unthinking, overprivileged minor royals. Successive Conservative governments have made China policy haphazardly, either led by events or pushed into decisions by fiery backbenchers, from Huawei to Hong Kong. It would be rich to call it a “strategy”.
When Labour took power, it promised a “China audit” to cut through the confusion and put forward a consistent, thought-through approach. I had hoped that such a review might proactively consider where British interests lie and whether they are always zero-sum with the Chinese. It might have asked questions like: what are the crucial industries in which Chinese involvement would risk national security? Which are the areas where Chinese investment should be welcomed, if any? How much do we value goals such as tackling climate change or standing up for human rights, in relation to our relationship with China?
Then we might have had a clearer idea of the different kinds of engagement we could have with Beijing. For example, buying cheap clothes from China is clearly not in the same order of risk to national security risk as relying on Chinese semiconductors – so the proposed London listing of the fast fashion giant Shein should probably trigger a different reaction to the Chinese takeover of a Welsh chip factory.
It might also have suggested some constructive ways in which to bat off temptation from Beijing – where are the vulnerabilities in our society? If financially struggling minor royals are grifting for money, perhaps it’s time to trim the monarchy. Similarly, if the higher education sector is reliant on Chinese students, then maybe it should be better funded.
These crucial questions may yet be addressed when the audit is finally published, but I fear that would be a Christmas miracle. It seems that the Government already has an answer without doing the necessary homework. As the Andrew furore unfolded, the Guardian reported that the audit will now be delayed until after Rachel Reeves visits Beijing with a delegation of business leaders. What, then, is the point of the audit? Just like under the Conservatives, China policy is being made on the hoof. So what hope have any of us – let alone Andrew – in knowing what the new rules of engagement with China should be?
Cindy Yu is an assistant editor of The Spectator and presenter of their Chinese Whispers podcast. She was brought up in Nanjing.
