“AI could help us to a better future. Or it could kill us all.”
This was a unexpectedly frank and surprisingly succinct response from China’s wily and very powerful foreign minister Wang Yi. He was discussing our mutual interest in ensuring AI development has mutually agreed parameters. I was listening as part of a British delegation – in Beijing on a trip many in our party did not want us to make.
China and our relations with them has always been a very tricky trade off.
I understand the current Government’s dilemma. It is the same as all governments have had to tackle: in a globalised economy it is not realistic to do no trade whatever with China and yet we cannot, indeed must not, ignore their blatantly obvious threat to our National Security.
Before we get into the current scandal over the collapse of a trial of two British men accused of spying for China, and why it is a scandal, it’s worth giving some context.
In my time working for the then Foreign Secretary, Sir James Cleverly, I oversaw communications but also two policy areas. Just two: Russia and China. You cannot do that without a level of clearance and in so much as I am allowed to, I know whereof I speak.
China has had a consistent negotiating position with us, with everyone.
Crudely put it is: we want to trade with you, even invest in your country, but we don’t like it when you say and do things that are anti-China and when you do, we will frustrate your attempts at building closer links.
The US has the same issue. It manages huge trade with China but also a tense diplomatic relationship.
For a people who set great store by ‘saving face’ the one thing China doesn’t say – but is just as hard wired into their system – is they will continue to probe, steal and lie about the gathering of information and technology by illicit means in our system.
They do do it, and they know we know they do it.
Cleverly got significant pushback from some over going to Beijing. Critics were understandably angry with China who still persist in sanctioning a number of good Conservative colleagues, and others, simply because Beijing doesn’t like what they say about the Communist one party state and it’s threat both to our security and their own citizens’ human rights.
The truth is our conversations with China were interwoven with our refusal to ignore and to raise with them directly their treatment of the Uighurs, the breaching of the agreement in Hong Kong and new laws imposed, their imprisonment of Jimmy Lai, the sanctioning of our MPs and their persistence in spying on our industry, political and bureaucratic arena.
This did not make conversations easy. The visit to Beijing was on, off, on, off almost to departure because it was made clear certain ‘awkward’ instances and our handling of them had ‘consequences’.
Chinese negotiation is always transactional within a political prism. Rishi Sunak never got to meet President Xi face to face, partly because the last Government wouldn’t compromise on calling out the bad stuff. though to some we were still ‘soft on China’.
We allowed our police to independently (imagine that in China) investigate the thuggery of five Chinese consular staff and the Consul General, Zheng Xiyuan in Manchester in attacking anti-China demonstrators in October 2022. He later went on Sky to say it was his ‘duty’ to try to pull one protester by the hair into the consulate. He was only stopped by protestors and police.
When the police wanted to further their investigation we requested, under the Vienna Convention – and refusal was almost guaranteed– that China waive the six individuals’ diplomatic immunity so they could be interviewed by police or face consequences – expulsion. Had we done so immediately, China would have removed six much more senior British Embassy staff.
In the end we lost no staff, and the Chinese quietly informed us none of those individuals were in the UK any longer. Don’t imagine they ‘got away with it’, the Chinese were deeply embarrassed by the incident and the ex-Consul General will never set foot here again.
Similarly when the Governor of Xianjang decided he would do a tour of European capitals to explain why the West was so wrong about how they had treated the Uighurs we let it be known via channels that if he did set foot in the UK, he’d be summoned to the Foreign Office to meet an official, not a minister, for a one-way conversation with photographic and data evidence as to how we knew they were mistreating the Uighurs and we would then release details of the meeting to the press. MPs vigorously protested the visit, but it was that meeting Erkin Tuniyaz did not want.
Word came from their embassy that he had changed his travel plans due to domestic demands on his time. Saving Face.
Which brings us to that new embassy.
A plan that was submitted with very little information surrounding certain sections of the building, was explicitly tied – transaction again – by the Chinese to any attempt by us to renovate and rebuild our embassy complex in Beijing.
We explained that hard though it was for someone of the power of Wang Yi to understand, there was a process in the UK that involved local planning, and that whilst they were frustrated a government minister, a foreign secretary perhaps, couldn’t just order the go ahead, we could not intervene in the process. And would not.
I once, only half-jokingly, suggested to our officials that we should send the head of planning at Tower Hamlets to Beijing, to explain UK planning law to them. I’m still not sure who’d have lost patience first.
We told China they could appeal the planning process, and their position was ‘we will if you can assure us it will then progress’. Not so we said, you appeal and if successful we’ll let you know if it can progress. Impasse, and the Chinese let the appeal deadline pass.
Cue the change of government in 2024 and everything seems to change.
Labour’s initial mission was ‘a relentless focus on growth’ and to boost that they wanted wider trade with China. The sums involved are vast. I see the temptation but at what cost?
It was extraordinary how quickly David Lammy as Foreign Secretary, Rachel Reeves as Chancellor went to Beijing for talks, and that Keir Starmer got his meeting with President Xi on the margins of the G20. The intent, not invalid, was clear: Labour were going all out for a trade and inward investment deal.
As the economy and growth has stuttered under Labour and Reeves has lost her headroom, if not her head, the desire to land that deal has become more intense.
The Chinese, knowing full well that this is the case, have resubmitted the original unamended Embassy plan, and David Lammy and Yvette Cooper – now his replacement as foreign secretary – did what we would not, lobbied Angela Rayner – the only ‘legally responsible minister’ in such circumstances – and yes, I see the irony- to suggest she should call the application in.
The Times suggested this week that Labour gave the assurances we would not, that the application would progress.
It looked like a total reset in order to smooth the way for a trade deal. If not, then it looked like giving China what it wanted, what it had always wanted, with nothing yet to show for the UK. Keir Starmer is expected to visit Beijing soon.
Initial police concerns about the new embassy magically changed to ambivalence, and security concerns were managed out of the equation.
Then we gave the Chagos Islands to a Chinese ally. Yes, I know we, me included, entered negotiations with Mauritius on orders from Boris Johnson but we didn’t do a deal because it became obvious it was a bad deal.
Everything since July 2024, that is connected to China, has somehow fallen China’s way. Of course people are asking questions.
So why, when as Tom Tugendhat, and Alicia Kearns, and Iain Duncan Smith – all sanctioned by China – have indicated, were they told the case against two individuals accused of spying for China in parliament was a ‘slam dunk’? Why when I was told that even bringing charges would be an indication of how solid the case was, has this trial of two alleged spies now collapsed?
In isolation, one might, just, accept that there are complications that cannot be revealed, but set against the context I have laid out it is simply untenable that the changing explanations, and attempts to blame others from the Government are remotely credible.
They cannot answer the key question: who decided – and why – either not to provide evidence to the CPS that a former head of MI5, two former heads of MI6, the former DPP, and former National Security Advisor, and former Cabinet Secretary insist do exist – that the UK at the time charges were brought – saw China as ‘a threat’. Or, and it’s possible I suppose, they simply didn’t notice until it was too late. Or worse someone somewhere quietly advised it get dropped.
One of those things happened. It’s cock up or conspiracy. It’s not a credible outcome otherwise.
The blather about antiquated law, is bogus. Nobody understands that excuse.
I felt sorry for Dan Jarvis a man I respect and like, sent out to bat with nothing but a lame accusation of ‘smears’ and an official to throw under a bus, in the face of Kemi Badenochs’s questions from the dispatch box.
Home Office minister Chris Bryant was sat next to Jarvis on the front bench throughout Monday’s proceedings. The man who once accused my former boss of being ‘a Chinese stooge’!
This isn’t just about getting a scalp or an opposition win, this is about a very bad signal sent to China that, in a bid to stay ‘onside’ with trade and co-operation, with this government awkward issues, and tricky demands will somehow, and apparently independent of each other, fall China’s way. Stooge, indeed!
Labour has a China problem, and mark my words, this story is not going away.
