China is engaged in a ‘whole of state’ assault on the UK and the government’s approach has been ‘completely inadequate’. That is the devastating verdict of today’s long-awaited report on China by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. The committee accepts that Chinese influence and interference activities may be difficult to detect, but questions whether the government has even been looking in the first place. ‘China’s size, ambition and capability have enabled it to successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy,’ it states.
The committee notes that there is still no comprehensive list of areas of sensitive UK research which need protecting
The nine-member committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Julian Lewis MP, began its inquiry in 2019 and is scathing about the government’s failure to wake up to the challenges faced in academia, industry and technology, where the UK has been too willing to engage in tie-ups and to accept Chinese funding with few questions asked. The Chinese intelligence apparatus is almost certainly the largest in the world, and ‘it targets the UK and its interests prolifically and aggressively,’ the report states.
It says China’s global ambition to become a technological and economic superpower represents the ‘the greatest threat to the UK’, and that ‘China seeks to influence elites and decision-makers, to acquire information and Intellectual Property using covert and overt methods, and to gain technological supremacy.’
China has hoovered up technology and know-how by every means possible, the committee warns. ‘Chinese state-owned and non-state-owned companies, as well as academic and cultural establishments and ordinary Chinese citizens, are liable to be (willingly or unwillingly) co-opted into espionage and interference operations overseas.’
The committee notes that while the government insists its approach is ‘robust’, China experts struggle to see any strategy at all, let alone an effective one. It questions whether government departments have the necessary resources, expertise or knowledge to counter China’s ‘all of society’ approach. ‘The UK is now playing catch-up and the whole of government has its work cut out to understand and counter the threat from China.’
It says the government has consistently failed to think of the longer-term, and its failure to protect UK assets ‘is one that the UK may feel the consequences of for years to come.’
Academia comes in for particular criticism and is characterised as ‘a rich feeding ground for China’, where Beijing ‘exerts influence over institutions by leveraging fees and funding, over individual UK academics through inducements and intimidation, over Chinese students by monitoring and controlling, and over think tanks through coercion.’ The report adds that the government has shown very little interest in warnings from academia, even though China ‘often acts in plain sight’. The committee notes that there is still no comprehensive list of areas of sensitive UK research which need protecting and says that while it is legitimate for a state to seek to exert influence, China oversteps the boundary. ‘It has been particularly effective at using its money and influence to penetrate or buy academia in order to ensure its international narrative is advanced and criticism suppressed.’
The committee says that the West is already over-reliant on Chinese technology, and that ‘without swift and decisive action, we are on a trajectory for the nightmare scenario where China steals blueprints, sets standards, and builds products, exerting political and economic influence at every step.’
Of particular alarm is that Chinese companies have been allowed to participate in UK critical infrastructure projects, such as nuclear power, and the committee questions whether the security risks were ever communicated to or understood by ministers.
It is hard to image a more complete demolition of the government’s bumbling and ineffective China policy, as far as one can even be identified. To say that government has been asleep at the wheel would be an understatement. And there is still little sign of a coherent policy towards the severe threat posed by China and so comprehensively and chillingly set out by the committee.
Comments