Sir Keir Starmer is scheduled to travel to Beijing this week, having just approved China’s controversial new “super-embassy” in London. The visit comes amidst increasing concerns about China’s campaign of influence, infiltration, espionage and transnational repression across Britain; and at a time when Xi Jinping is intensifying his crackdown on human rights across China.
Critics would argue now is not the time to go, and certainly not the time to continue to kowtow. Today’s revelation that China has established a network of at least 75 covert influence outposts across the UK, embedded in universities, businesses and diaspora communities, is alarming.
Documented by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), the findings point to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s United Front – a body used to coerce, co-opt and influence decision-makers, shape narratives and suppress criticism.
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But this is just the latest in a series of alarming reports of Beijing’s antics – and the British Government’s utter failure to tackle them. Last October, the prosecution of two alleged China spies collapsed when the Government refused to describe China as a threat to national security.
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Academic freedom has been increasingly threatened. Last November, Sheffield Hallam University halted research led by Prof Laura Murphy into forced labour in supply chains, under pressure from Beijing.
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Beijing’s transnational repression has intensified. Hong Kong exiles who have fled to the United Kingdom seeking refuge have faced threats from CCP agents, and Beijing has placed arrest warrants and bounties on some of their heads.
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One Hong Kong exile, Carmen Lau, was subjected to an obscene campaign of sexual harassment. Even I have received anonymous threatening letters, as have my neighbours and my mother, who was told to tell me to “shut up”.
On top of all this, there is the intensifying crackdown on human rights in China. A British national, 78 year-old media entrepreneur and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, has spent the past five years in solitary confinement and is in deteriorating health. He is awaiting sentencing under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law, and may well die in jail.
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What about, ha?