Sally-Ann Hart: Governments may not have designated China an ‘enemy’ but it certainly isn’t a ‘friend’

Sally-Ann Hart is the former MP for Hastings and Rye and a former Rother district councillor. 

I recently read an interesting article about Xi Jinping’s purges of officials, including army generals, designed to eliminate dissent and demonstrate that absolute power in China rests solely with him and the Communist Party he controls.

The most disturbing aspect was reference to Xi’s belief that opening-up China had led to liberal ideas and the party’s loss of control over the individual. He believes that Soviet Union fell because its leaders lost discipline and loosened control over society. After decades of openness that brought both modernisation and, in his view, moral decay, Xi has set out to restore Communist Party dominance and reassert control over every aspect of Chinese life to “correct what needs to be corrected” as he puts it. Gosh.

This made me think about socialism, the Labour Party and its long-standing sucking-up to China (anyone remember Barry Gardner and the hundreds of thousands he accepted from a Chinese spy?). The Labour Party’s growing willingness to bend to China’s influence is one of the most disturbing developments in British politics today. Behind the diplomatic language and talk of “engagement,” there lies a disturbing admiration for a regime that stands for everything our country rejects – central control, suppression of individual liberty, and ideological conformity masquerading as progress.

Sir Keir Starmer and his team appear blind to the reality that China, under Xi Jinping, is not a benign economic partner but an assertive, authoritarian superpower pursuing global dominance through state control, technology, and coercion. For all Labour’s talk of values, the problem is that they are increasingly enamoured with Beijing’s model of top-down governance, a system that we know throughout history, subordinates the individual to the collective and the State, and crushes dissent in the name of “unity.”

Xi’s mission to “correct what needs to be corrected” is chilling. It is a declaration that individual freedom, independent thought, and private enterprise will be bent back under the control of the Communist Party. It is about re-asserting the Party’s dominance over every corner of life, from religion and education to business and personal behaviour. The parallels with Labour’s instinct for control, over the economy, over families, over what we say and think are uncomfortable, but undeniable.

Instead of challenging this authoritarian vision, Labour’s foreign policy signals a disturbing willingness to appease it. From the murky collapse of the recent Chinese spy cases to the handing over of the Chagos Islands (for billions), its hesitancy to call out China’s human rights abuses, to its failure to defend British academic freedom from Chinese influence, Labour too often seems paralysed by fear of offending Beijing. We are told that Britain must “engage” China, as though doing business with a regime that censors, snoops, and imprisons its own citizens is somehow an act of global responsibility. It is not. It is Labour’s convenient excuse for moral cowardice and economic short-termism.

Cameron’s government made mistakes with China, and we should learn from this. A Conservative approach must be clear-eyed and unapologetic. Britain can and should trade with the world, but not at the cost of our sovereignty, security, or moral integrity. The British people expect their government to stand up for freedom, not sell it off for access to Chinese markets. We must ensure that our critical infrastructure, our universities, and our technology sectors are protected from state-directed espionage and economic dependency.

It is telling that while China exerts control through surveillance and censorship, Labour seems increasingly comfortable with its own forms of soft authoritarianism here at home, policing language, curbing free expression, and using regulation as a tool of social engineering. The shared impulse is clear. It is a belief by both China and Labour that the individual cannot be trusted, that the State knows best, and that dissent is something to be managed rather than heard.

We cannot allow Britain to fall for it. We are a free nation built on personal responsibility, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. These are principles which are utterly incompatible with Beijing’s worldview. Our government must not copy China’s efficiency or its economic centralism but prove that free societies can thrive without sacrificing liberty on the altar of control. We should be proud of what makes us different from China, not what makes China powerful. Our strength lies in freedom, not obedience. No responsible government should ever forget that.

If Labour continues to kowtow to Beijing, it will not only betray our allies and our values, it will also betray the British people. Britain must draw a firm line: engagement – yes, subservience, never.