The decision by the Director General of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, to publicly alert MPs and Peers that they are being targeted by Chinese intelligence operations consolidated my long-held view that Britain is smaller than ever. Crucially, though, the news from MI5 should not come as some great shock. For over a decade, Britain’s economic vulnerability has left it exposed to the lure of Chinese espionage under the guise of investment.
The Economic-Security Nexus
In our reliance on Chinese economic investment, and our inability – or outright refusal – to ignore the well-documented national security risks that accompany them, Britain is selling its soul for the shortest of short-term gains. It reminds us that modern Britain is one that is divided, chronically insecure, and lacking political and moral authority. The very fact that the Director General felt the need to launch a public campaign on this, despite much of this information already being known and documented, highlights a much deeper point: our national security infrastructure is concerned that the State itself is unabashedly ignoring the risks for its own perceived gain.
As the decision on whether to grant planning permission to China’s Mega-Embassy in the heart of Central London looms, McCallum’s warning feels like much more than telling MPs Chinese agents are connecting with them on LinkedIn. It feels akin to a lobbying operation to save the State from itself. The post-2008 economic climate, combined with the uncertainty that followed Brexit, pushed formerly dominant Western economies to look East for growth and public investment. Over time, these same economies – especially a shrinking Britain – had to choose between immediate economic security, and longer-term national security. Almost without exception, Britain chose the former. And now, as the scale and sophistication of the Chinese intelligence operation becomes clear, we are reaping what we have sown. In the recent controversy surrounding the collapsed Chinese spy case investigating two Parliamentary staffers accused of espionage, in which it seemed that our inability – or unwillingness – to label China as a threat played a central role, we saw the consequences of an incoherent China policy.
But it’s not just Westminster. China’s influence in the UK goes far beyond the corridors of Parliament. Here in the North-East, where we have brilliant, award-winning Universities, we see the consequences of a passive China policy. A report by Civitas in 2021 – included in the Intelligence Security Committee report – found that over 50% of British Russell Group Universities had, or had had, research based relations with companies directly affiliated to the Chinese armed forces, including both of my North-East Alma Maters, with one accepting £663,000,01 from Chinese entities (2018-2022) including £80,000 from a defence university rated ‘very high risk’ by APSI. The other accepted almost £2.9 million over six years – including more than half a million from Chinese military companies sanctioned by the US, and a further £850,000 from entities linked directly to the Chinese armed forces. We are a small country playing at being a great one. Now, through the cracks, Britain’s weakness is laid sharply in view.
The decline of global Britain
Britain has a complicated relationship with its colonial and imperial history, and it is right that our days of Empire are behind us. Yet it is worth remembering that the idea of a “Global Britain” – a confident, outward-facing, diplomatically active nation – was not always hollow rhetoric. For a time, Britain traded on this view of a modern Britain offering stability and diplomatic weight in an international context. Largely undefined, Britain’s intangible global offering was something that felt a source of national pride; we felt that we offered something. Not just politically: music, film, arts, science, our history felt like it came together into one holistic offering that differentiated ourselves from other nations. That, even though our military preponderance had waned, we were not limited by our geography. Britain the tiny island punching above its weight.
But ideas only survive in the climates that nourish them. The days of the Clinton-style Democrat and the post-Cold War “New World Order” are behind us. Globalisation has become catnip for autocrats and disrupters, and Britain has allowed itself to slide down the greasy pole into irrelevance alongside it – albeit whilst proclaiming its own national sovereignty.
Today’s zeitgeist is much more brittle. On all fronts, our politics is insecure and inward looking. Foreign policy is, understandably, secondary to everything else. Britain’s infrastructure is broken, and any attempts at ramping up progress and developments are often significantly hindered by bureaucratic red tape. The political class reflects this contraction. Whether it’s Farage on the hard right – the champion of Brexit and likely future Prime Minister – or Zack Polanski on the left, our prominent anti-establishment politicians are advancing platforms that effectively sideline foreign policy considerations altogether. In many ways, this is entirely right: Reform and the Greens should be campaigning on domestic issues, but if either want to be credible forces for government, they’ve also got to have a policy on China and Russia that isn’t on the back of a beermat. But internationally, Farage’s vision of a strong Britain amounts to building a ten-foot wall around the coastline, and Polanski, for his part, has argued that Britain should leave NATO and approaches politics from a bottom-up, eco-populist lens.
For Polanski, this is partially understandable given where the Greens find themselves, but it stands to reason that for all the talk about how great Britain apparently is, none of that involves playing an active role on the world stage. A nation that once imagined itself shaping global events now struggles even to define its place within them. For me, a truly Global Britain is one that is interested in driving diplomatic aims on the world stage. It’s a country with a healthy foreign aid budget, and one that sees the future of politics in much more nuanced ways. It’s one that calls out human rights violations at full volume. It’s one that sees China and Russia’s “peacekeeping” footprint in Africa and doesn’t just respond with a passive shrug. Our politicians are obsessed with the politics of the next 24 hours, not the next 20 years; we govern for headlines, not horizons. We see that lack of urgency when it comes to climate policy, and AI regulation – an area where Britain speaks loudly but legislates slowly, if at all. And that’s what modern Britain is. It’s a sluggish, heavy state still operating in the past and making no effort to look forward. In that vacuum – a Britain too cautious, too inward, too slow – China has been able to weave itself into the fabric of our society with barely any resistance. That England that was wont to conquer others hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
China’s Digital Silk Road
The Digital Silk Road (DSR), established around 2015, functions as the digital infrastructure arm of China’s wider Belt and Road Initiative. In practice, it operates as an informal exchange: developing countries with sluggish economies and weak digital infrastructure – such as Angola, Laos and Uganda – receive Beijing-backed investment to build large-scale digital networks, and China, in return, gains influence over the systems and data that flow through them. While NATO countries remain locked into traditional models of conflict planning, China has spent the past decade reorienting itself to a new reality: that data is the weapon of the future, and that dominance in the digital sphere confers strategic power every bit as significant as territory or troops. When, in 2020, Boris Johnson ignored warnings from the US – and his own security services – and approved Huawei’s participation in Britain’s 5G network, it signalled that China’s DSR model could operate not just in the developing world, but in a G7 economy. Though the Government did U-turn months later, the fact that it was prepared to override its own security advice in the name of economic convenience is telling. It exposes modern Britain for what it really is: small, uninspired and frankly, desperate.
Ultimately, when you consider that the China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) – a Chinese state-owned enterprise – holds a 33.5% stake in the first nuclear reactor to be built in Britain in decades at Hinkley Point C, and was set to take a 66.5% stake in the Bradwell B project in Essex, where it would have deployed Chinese nuclear technology, it becomes clear that Sir Ken McCallum’s warning is about far more than a few LinkedIn honeytraps for gullible MPs.
The extent to which Chinese economic influence now touches the fibres of Britain’s critical infrastructure is systemic. The warning from Mi5 is a clear attempt at lobbying against further British short-sightedness. It has seen its own intelligence advice ignored repeatedly, and it is clearly alarmed that the same pattern may repeat with the approval of the Chinese mega-embassy – a compound that will sit atop sensitive fibre-optic cabling in the heart of London, and whose building plans are so heavily redacted that seasoned security officials have raised eyebrows. This, in the same week that the MOD warned its staff not to talk because its own vehicles could have been infiltrated by Chinese tech.
What is perhaps most alarming is that despite the clear risk, it is still probable that the UK government will approve planning permission for the Mega-Embassy. If it goes ahead, the approval of the Mega-Embassy will not simply be a planning decision: it will be a capitulation. It will mark the moment Britain finally gave up pretending to be the author of its own story. A nation that once saw itself as outward-looking and self-assured has shrunk into one that cannot recognise danger even when its own intelligence services place it at the door. The greatest tragedies are not sudden; they are slow, and they are chosen. What’s past is simply prologue.
Sources
Clark, Robert. Inadvertently Arming China? One Year On: The Chinese Military Complex and its Exploitation of Scientific Research at UK Universities, Civitas (October 2022)
Hinson, Suzanna. New Nuclear Power, House of Commons Library, Briefing Paper: Number CBP 8176 (February 26, 2021).
His Majesty’s Government. Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, (March 2021).
House of Lords, International Relations and Defence Committee. The UK and China’s Security Trade Relationship: A Strategic Void, 1st Report of Session 2021-22, (September 2021).
Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament: China, HC 1605, (July 2023).
