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When John le Carré joined Britain's internal security agency, MI5, in the 1950s, long before he found fame as a spy novelist, his first job wasn't hunting down the KGB. He was given the unglamorous task of keeping an eye on Commonwealth students in London. Chinese spies were believed to be using Chinese Singaporean and Malay students to gather industrial intelligence. It wasn't the most glamorous job. Mr le Carré was “disappointed'' to discover that MI5's China expert was an “elderly retired missionary with incomplete language skills'', his biographer recalls.
PREMIUM FILE – Pedestrians are silhouetted walking on a footbridge as Chinese and Hong Kong flags are raised to mark the 26th anniversary of the city's handover from Britain to China in Hong Kong, June 27, 2023. The security law comes on top of broad laws imposed by the Chinese government and used to crack down on dissent, deepening concerns about the erosion of freedoms in the former British colony. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte, File) (The Associated Press)
Today, China policy is no longer a fringe area of intelligence. On May 13, police charged three men, including a former Royal Marine, with aiding Hong Kong's intelligence services (which are actually controlled from Beijing) and engaging in “foreign interference.” The men were charged under the National Security Law, which will be passed in July 2023 and is intended to give British police more powers to investigate and deal with Chinese covert activities. (China denies any involvement of Hong Kong's intelligence services.)
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The law is one aspect of a significant shift in Britain's view of China over the past decade. Britain has transformed China from a source of golden trade and investment opportunities into a much more hostile entity. The relationship continues to raise complex questions about the balance between prosperity and national security, openness and protectionism. But hawkish views prevail.
A foreign policy review published last year warned that China poses “an era-defining challenge to the type of international order we want.” That assessment, as harsh as it was in Europe, is reinforced as Chinese supplies of dual-use goods fuel Russia's defense industry and intensify the Ukraine war. There is still room for nuance. On May 8, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, nodded to China's “responsible role” in condemning Russian nuclear threats later in 2022. But officials are increasingly placing China in the same league as Russia, Iran and North Korea. On May 14, Anne Keast-Butler, director of the British intelligence agency GCHQ, said the agency is now devoting more resources to China “than any other single mission.”
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The May 13 indictment was an example of what British spies see as a multi-pronged attack on the country's security. One of them is espionage. The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee said in a report last year that China has “the world's largest national intelligence agency”, dwarfing its British counterpart. In March, the government publicly accused Chinese hackers of targeting the emails of the country's election commission and members of parliament critical of China. Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden claimed the attacks signaled “a clear and sustained pattern of behavior that indicates hostility from China”. In April, two men, including a former parliamentary researcher closely associated with the China Research Group, a club of China-skeptical members of Congress, were charged with spying for China under the rarely used Official Secrets Act. . The Chinese embassy in London characterized the charges as “malicious defamation”.
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All countries engage in espionage. What makes Chinese espionage particularly egregious in the eyes of officials is not only its scale, but also the damage it causes to the UK economy. In a speech in October, Ken McCallum, head of the British intelligence agency MI5, said he was targeting people suspected of being Chinese spies on networking sites such as LinkedIn to steal technology in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology. He said 20,000 Brits had been contacted by the UK, double the number two and a half years ago. He estimated that 10,000 businesses were at risk.
In April, the government convened the heads of 24 top universities and security officials to discuss issues such as transparency of funding sources and screening of researchers in sensitive fields. A report published last year by think tank Civitas found that 46 universities received between 122 million pounds and 156 million pounds ($153 million to $196 million) in funding from China between 2017 and summer 2023. About 16% to 20% of that money came from organizations that have been sanctioned by the United States for their ties to the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
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The second factor is political interference. Chinese immigrants have long complained of threats and coercion, both physical and virtual, from Chinese authorities. This is of particular concern for immigrants from Hong Kong. Hong Kong passed a strict national security law in 2020, which came into effect in March. Human rights group Amnesty International says students involved in political and human rights activities on campus are frequently followed, harassed and threatened against their families in China. “Every time, someone [we] “Some students don't know how to take pictures,” one student pointed out. “He's standing to the side and using his cell phone to record. He doesn't say anything, he just stands there holding his cell phone.”
The third issue is Chinese technology. In 2019 and 2020, the UK was embroiled in a fierce debate over whether Western countries should exclude equipment made by tech giant Huawei from their 5G mobile networks. US and Australian intelligence said the technology posed significant security risks. British intelligence argued that the problem could be addressed by carefully scrutinizing the equipment. Ultimately, the UK relented, in part due to US sanctions against Huawei. The UK has since banned Chinese-made surveillance cameras from “sensitive central government facilities”.
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Still, the debate over the use of Chinese technology remains unresolved. Local authorities are still under no obligation to remove such cameras. At least a third of police forces in England and Wales use surveillance cameras made by Hikvision, a Chinese company blacklisted by the United States for aiding mass repression in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A new debate has brewed over the role of Chinese-made Cellular Internet of Things Modules (CIMs), tiny radio components found in everything from cameras and smart meters to internet routers and cars that skeptics say China could use to steal data or disrupt critical national infrastructure.
In response to these developments, governments have put in place a series of legal and regulatory measures. One of these is the National Security Act, which gives the government new powers to prosecute people who act as agents of foreign states. The other is the National Security and Investment Act, passed in 2021, which allows for scrutiny of foreign investments. More than half of the interventions in the first year after implementation involved Chinese companies. Yet another is the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, whose key provisions will come into force in August. The law requires universities to protect freedom of speech on campus and prohibits Chinese-funded institutes and scholarships at UK universities, according to guidelines published by the Office for Students. likely to lead to restrictions.
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For China skeptics, this is still not enough. One issue is the implementation of existing policies. The country's main carrier, BT, has twice missed deadlines to remove Huawei equipment from the core of its network. Another is that many important powers have been delegated. For example, the Higher Education Act does not apply to Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. “There's a huge back door called Scotland and no one in Whitehall is giving it the consideration it deserves,” complains Scottish National Party MP Stewart MacDonald. Hawks also want to place China as an “enhanced tier” country under the national security law, which would impose strict registration requirements on individuals or organizations acting “on China's instructions.” It turns out.
Not all banks and companies like the sound of that. China has become Britain's fifth largest trading partner (see chart). It's caught up in the supply chain. Deselecting this relationship involves a significant tradeoff. For example, the debate over China's growing imports of electric vehicles pits the benefits of cheaper cars and faster emissions reductions against concerns about unfair competition and security vulnerabilities. There are fault lines running through the government. Prime Minister Jeremy Hunt is thought to be cautious about making any decisions that could cause economic pain, especially before an election. He said Lord Cameron, who championed relations with China as prime minister from 2010 to 2016 and sought to set up a £1bn Anglo-Chinese investment fund after leaving office, turned China-sceptic as foreign secretary. It is being said.
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What hawks and doves might agree on is that Britain lacks expertise in understanding China. The number of students studying Chinese fell 31% between 2012 and 2021, according to the Higher Education Statistics Association (not counting students taking Chinese as part of another degree). Whitehall has pledged to double funding for China-related expertise in government in 2023, but Sam Hogg, author of the newsletter From Beijing to Britain, says there is “little financial incentive to become a China expert and work your way through the system.” He says many civil servants with China expertise are demoralized or have moved to the private sector. It’s a poor foundation for what McCallum calls a “decades-long strategic competition.”
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