The Chinese company, with its ties to the Communist regime, would put British interests at risk.
The Chinese company, with its ties to the Communist regime, would put British interests at risk.
H ow does COVID-19 affect the United Kingdom’s relations with China? It is a question made all the more difficult to answer by London’s lack of a strategy for dealing with Beijing. The U.K. has not had such a strategy since George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer at the time, declared a “golden era” of British–Sino relations on a trip to Beijing in 2015. In hindsight, Osborne’s “era” looks more like an error.
At first glance, it seems that COVID-19 has not affected relations — or at least, did not initially. U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson spoke with Chinese general secretary Xi Jinping in mid-February to express his sympathy to all those in China who were affected. It was the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that the two had spoken. They “resolved to work together across a range of issues including strengthening the economic partnership, to benefit the people of both China and the UK,” a spokeswoman for Johnson told Reuters.
Very much a case of “business as usual,” then. A month or so later, however, Johnson fell ill and was diagnosed as infected with the coronavirus. He was admitted to the hospital in early April and soon after was moved to intensive care. (He recovered and returned to work later the same month.) With Johnson ill, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab served as acting prime minister.
On 16 April, Raab appeared to signal a change in the U.K.’s approach to China, saying, “There is no doubt that we can’t have business as usual”: Hard questions needed to be asked about China’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Raab appeared to be reflecting the mood of the country. As news about China’s official lies and coverup in the crucial early days of the COVID-19 outbreak gradually emerged, the British public made up their own minds on the question of responsibility — and signaled the broader shape of the U.K.’s future relations with China. An opinion poll conducted in early April for the Henry Jackson Society showed that 74 percent of British adults believe that the Chinese government is to blame for allowing COVID-19 to spread. Moreover, 40 percent opposed allowing Huawei to take part in the U.K.’s 5G network, while only 27 percent approved.
Britain is the only Five Eyes partner to permit a role for Huawei in its 5G system. The others regard Huawei involvement as a serious threat to national security. The British government’s decision, taken in January, to admit Huawei came after years of intense debate at home and abroad. Britain’s allies now look on in alarm as a pillar of NATO and the rules-based international order takes a course that will likely undermine the security of its data — and of data shared by others.
The British public’s concern is shared by growing numbers of U.K. politicians. In early March, backbench MPs from the ruling Conservative Party staged a rebellion over Huawei, against their own government. More MPs have since rallied to the cause. Earlier this month, a new parliamentary group was established to review U.K.–China relations. It is led by Tom Tugendhat, an MP known for trenchant criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Despite all of this, however, there is still no sign that the prime minister will change his mind on Huawei. On April 21, the top-ranking official in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that “the government has made a firm decision to allow Huawei to have a role” and that, as far as he knew, the decision was “not being reopened.” If the official is right, unwelcome repercussions are inevitable. The American government has made its concerns plain; Australia, likewise. “Kidnap diplomacy” practiced against Canada shows how aggressively the CCP guards Huawei, a key strategic asset. (Beijing has accused two Canadian officials of espionage and detained them as hostages in China, in retaliation for Ottawa’s support for the extradition, from Canada to the U.S., of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, who was arraigned for the company’s violation of sanctions against Iran.) Britain’s capacity to resist revisionist challenges to the rules-based international order would be constrained.
As was not the case with 4G, Huawei’s involvement inside the U.K.’s 5G system will connect Britain, literally and morally, with the party-state that uses technology provided by Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, and others to persecute millions of Chinese citizens. Direct collaboration between Huawei and the CCP’s security establishment is evident from Chinese data published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Tellingly, ASPI also quotes a Huawei executive assuring the chairman of a U.K. parliamentary committee that no such direct arrangements exist.
Why would the U.K. government enter into a relationship with an agent of CCP oppression, thereby compromising not only national security but also Britain’s integrity as a proponent of freedom, human rights, and democracy?
Huawei’s presence in the U.K. has long been about more than access to the digital-communications sector. According to a report paid for by Huawei, the company in 2018 “purchased over £900 million of goods from UK businesses,” “stimulated a £1.7 billion contribution to UK GDP,” “generated £470 million in tax revenue,” and “invested £112 million in R&D in the UK.”
Investment in R&D is particularly significant. Some of it — for example, a £5 million grant for a “5G Innovation Centre” at the University of Surrey — can be linked to Huawei’s bid to be part of the U.K. 5G rollout. Other funding is focused on applications of innovative technologies. Here Huawei may interact with other PRC entities.
In one well-known instance, Xi Jinping visited the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at the University of Manchester during his state visit to the U.K. in 2015. The same day Huawei announced a “partnership” with the NGI for research into graphene and other materials. Three years later, another ASPI study reported, the university had become the fifth-largest collaborator with China, measured by the number of peer-reviewed papers it published involving scholars affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). On return to China after study at the NGI, one such researcher was mentioned in a PLA magazine as working on two of the PLA’s most sensitive programs.
With or without the involvement of Huawei, this pattern of activity is replicated in many other U.K. research laboratories engaged with innovative dual-use technology. Many such laboratories have come increasingly to depend on Chinese funding and participation in research.
Unlike the U.S. and Australia, the U.K. has made no systematic attempt to assess the strategic risk and economic losses incurred as a result of reliance on Chinese support. Yet in the wake of the COVID-19 disaster, all such dependency must be seen clearly for what it is: a challenge, not an opportunity.
The U.S. government has made clear its own position on Huawei. It believes Huawei to be a Chinese state-directed organization with a single goal: to undermine foreign competition by stealing trade secrets and intellectual property, and to compromise 5G networks in the process. No amount of prevarication from Huawei’s well-paid apologists in the U.K. can alter that fact. Huawei is one part of the CCP’s armory in an asymmetric struggle in pursuit of its interests against those of the free world.
Brexit, Hong Kong, COVID-19, and much else makes building a new British relationship with China long overdue. That will requires honesty about when it is in the interest of the U.K. to cooperate with China’s strategic aims and when it is not. Britain cannot go it alone and so should align its approach to China with those of allies and friends. Reversing the Huawei decision would be a start, but only that.