I’d be the perfect communist shill

Could I be the model communist shill? Consider these facts: I was born and raised in China. I speak and read Chinese. Some question my English accent, almost suspiciously posh given that I didn’t speak a word of the language until the age of ten. Before the pandemic, I visited China regularly. My podcast, Chinese Whispers, often explains the Chinese government’s way of looking at things. I studied at Oxford and now work at the heart of the British establishment. Am I not ideally placed to advance Beijing’s agenda?

When I started my career, this was all a joke. Now it’s less of one. The atmosphere in Britain towards China has soured. Over the past seven years, the government has gone from David Cameron’s kowtowing to Beijing to Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss jostling to out-hawk each other. Some of our political class are now applying a new test: will you condemn China at every turn? If not, you’re probably an apologist. There seem to be only two categories: hawk or shill, with no shade in between. The S-word is thrown around with alarming frequency. It doesn’t matter whether you’re actually working for the Chinese Communist party; the point is, you may as well be. As Oxford’s Rana Mitter, perhaps Britain’s foremost academic expert on China, puts it: ‘We’ve gone from complacency to panic without the intervening stage of knowledge.’

I don’t deny that China poses a real challenge. In fact, on this I’m probably aligned with Steve Bannon, who said that the West should be more concerned about Beijing than Moscow. The CCP does plant shills. MI5 is right to warn about politicians taking dirty money from individuals linked to the United Front, which works to capture foreign elites and overseas Chinese. We also need to be clear-eyed about the lobbying efforts from major Chinese companies such as Huawei and question the role played by CCP-funded organisations such as Confucius Institutes.