Why Trade, Not Espionage, Should be Britain’s Key Concern with China | Insights by Simon Jenkins

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The claim that a Chinese spy in his 20s socializing within Westminster’s drinking scene poses a threat to the British state is ludicrous. MPs tend to exaggerate their role in foreign affairs. Boris Johnson, when he was foreign secretary in 2017, may have enjoyed the sense of power that came with deploying an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, but Britain is no more vulnerable to Chinese attack than China is to Britain. The concerns being raised by the defense lobby are nothing more than exaggerations.

Linking British interests to the rest of the world stems from a paranoid mindset rooted in the days of the British Empire. The Foreign Office is adorned with pictures from the past, where foreign secretaries would assert their dominance over lesser regimes abroad. The UK’s relationship with China is no exception. In the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, visiting British ministers were instructed to bring up human rights issues in their meetings with Chinese counterparts. James Cleverly, on a recent visit to Beijing, was tasked with the same. However, the response from the Chinese was always dignified, with a hint of pity towards the British for their perceived rudeness. Balancing the promotion of universal human rights with meaningful actions is a delicate task for any nation when it comes to events outside its borders. While the human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang should be condemned, there are limitations to what Western powers can achieve.

It is within the realm of possibility that China, like other dictatorships such as Russia, may be entering a period of instability. Current forecasts suggest that the Chinese economy might be retrenching. Its property market, which has long relied on rapid urbanization, is collapsing, and its labor supply is declining. The idea that Britain should prepare for war, whether hot or cold, in response to this perceived vulnerability is sheer madness. The most disastrous fallacy of the past 25 years has been the belief that the West has a post-imperial duty to intervene militarily to bring about change in the world. Who exactly assigns this duty? More importantly, wherever the West has tried to exercise this duty, it has failed, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

This stands in stark contrast to how the world should engage with China. Within a generation, China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and transformed its GDP from billions to trillions. However, the assumption that such prosperity would lead to liberalization has proven to be false. China has used its rise to trading dominance to flout accepted norms of international commerce. While China may have joined the sanctions game relatively recently, during the Trump presidency, it has employed such measures against foreigners and companies. China’s state institutions have a long history of competing through infiltration, piracy of intellectual property, and unfair trade practices. There is clear evidence of Chinese interference in British universities. In poorer countries in Africa and Asia, China has ruthlessly implemented its “belt and road” policies, much like the Western nations did during the 19th-century era of imperial expansion.

Smart diplomacy requires discernment. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is right in dismissing the need for empty displays of strength just to prove that Britain can punch above its weight. He is also right in toning down the previous warm relationship fostered by David Cameron and George Osborne, known as the “golden era” of UK-China relations. Beijing does not yet operate on the level of a sophisticated trading state. As demonstrated during the Covid pandemic, China’s government retains the corruption and repression associated with a communist regime. When faced with opposition, both domestically and internationally, its leaders seem to respond only to force.

This calls for a delicate balance. Britain has no interest in how China governs itself or its internal politics, just as it has no interest in the internal affairs of the US or Europe. However, Britain does have an interest in how the world trades with it. The UK’s trade relationship with China, worth £93 billion per year, is crucial to the nation’s prosperity and must be safeguarded and promoted. Similarly, the entire world has an interest in maintaining ongoing negotiations with China on the climate crisis, regardless of its internal politics.

China’s rulers must understand that they need to trade with the world just as much as the world needs to trade with them. This means playing by the rules of the game. Enforcing these rules poses the greatest challenge for Western diplomacy.