We must be as ruthless as Beijing in using all means available to protect our national security
Keir Starmer during a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, as he attends the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, January 2025 (Stefan Rousseau / PA Images / Alamy)
4 min read
The collapsed China spy case, the doubt about a new Chinese embassy and China’s takeover of UK companies have dominated the headlines in recent months. But our relationship with China is not a new debate.
It is not new to government, and it formed a major part of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report on China, published in July 2023. In its opening paragraph, this report reproduced the Joint Intelligence Committee’s assessment on China from 2019: “There is effectively a global values struggle going on in which China is determined to assert itself as a world power.” It goes on to say that China represents a risk on a pretty wide scale to UK interests.
China is the world’s second-largest economy and the UK’s third-largest trading partner. This has been achieved via China’s ‘Whole State’ approach, which sees Chinese state-owned companies and private enterprises work to the state’s national goal of economic supremacy. Alongside this, Chinese academia and state security structures work to the same plan to make China the number one world economic power by 2049, which happens to be the centenary of the founding of the communist state in China.
China has the world’s largest set of security services, with the common aim of maintaining the supremacy of the Communist Party within China and promoting China’s interests globally.
In the UK, by contrast, the debate about economic prosperity is often viewed as separate from our security interests. This separation over the last decade has led to the problems we see today. The so-called ‘golden era’ of China-UK relations in the David Cameron years turned a blind eye to the security concerns amid the search for economic prosperity. It also fundamentally ignored the economic facts about China’s approach.
China claimed to be embracing free market capitalism while using state subsidies and, in some cases, forced labour to obtain a dominant position in certain sectors and drive out western competitors. The world is littered with now defunct companies, from telecoms to manufacturing, that fell victim to this approach – the very opposite of free market competition.
But Chinese investment was welcomed with no sector seemingly deemed out-of-bounds, including our civil nuclear sector. Alongside cuts in government funding to our universities, there was also an explosion of Chinese students at UK universities and key research tie-ups with some of our best-known universities.
So, where does this leave us as of today?
It could be argued that because of past decisions we are more vulnerable than others. China ‘hawks’ advocate that cutting our economic and cultural ties with China is the only logical response. This is neither possible nor desirable. China is a global economic power we cannot ignore. The on-shoring of all manufacturing lost to China would not be feasible and would not make economic sense.
What is needed now is a clear assessment by government of which industries we deem critical to our economic security. We need an industrial strategy that looks across sectors to identify those industries which are important to our national security. Sovereign capability in the manufacture of drinking straws is obviously not necessary, but components and IP for our nuclear industry is essential. This may also mean working with like-minded allies and will need direct government intervention.
With the National Security and Investment Act, the government has the powers to intervene and stop critical industries falling into the hands of China or others we see as a threat to our interests. This legislation must be used proactively. Ministers must also listen and act on the assessments given to them by our security services, even when these may conflict with the short-term economic interests of the UK.
An urgent reassessment is also needed of the collaboration of UK universities and China. Not an outright ban, but an assessment and government intervention where such partnerships pose a risk to our national security. The public register of Chinese donations to UK universities recommended by the ISC in its report must also be enacted.
Lord Beamish is a Labour peer and chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee
