On Monday, after it was revealed that China had hacked the personal details of up to 40 million British voters, the Foreign Secretary — Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton — described the regime’s conduct as ‘completely unacceptable’.
He should know. It was Cameron who, as Prime Minister in the early 2010s, encouraged closer relations with Beijing.
It was thanks to him (and also to his Chancellor, George Osborne, who was equally enthusiastic about fostering ties) that the late Queen controversially had tea at Buckingham Palace with visiting Chinese officials; thanks to him that Xi Jinping was treated to a State Visit in 2015; and, ultimately, thanks to him that Britain ended up in the insane situation where China was to build a new nuclear power station in the UK.
When, in 2013, Cameron led a delegation of senior Government ministers to China (not long after Osborne had visited with a group of business leaders), my ex-husband, Michael Gove, was among them.
Despite being required to get straight off the plane and into meetings with officials, he and his team were told to make the ten-hour trip in economy. The directive was intended to deflect criticism back home against a background of austerity, but it caused consternation among their Chinese hosts. Basically, they laughed in his face.
The late Queen controversially has tea at Buckingham Palace with visiting Chinese officials including Xi Jinping, orchestrated by David Cameron, Sarah Vine writes
Nevertheless, the trip was no joke. Security was ultra-tight. Michael was provided with a ‘burner phone’ and told to leave his own at home. I was not allowed to have the number in case I rang it and the Chinese somehow used it to infiltrate my device and stick some bug on it.
Any gifts he was given — which he could not refuse, since that would have been the height of rudeness — were assumed to be bugged and had to be handed over or destroyed on his return (shame: one of them was a rather pretty tea set in a lacquered box). He was reminded that nowhere, not even his hotel rooms, could be considered private.
Nothing was as it seemed. Indeed, a photograph of them all supposedly toasting their arrival (alongside Vince Cable, who was the Business Secretary) with champagne was a fake: that was water in the glasses, not Champagne. It wasn’t even sparkling!
This photo of British leaders toasting their arrival in China in 2010 is not as it seems, writes Sarah Vine, as the liquid in the glass was water, not Champagne. Pictured: Michael Gove, Vince Cable, George Osborne and David Cameron
To be fair to Cameron, building ties with China seemed like a commercial imperative then.
The Conservatives had not long been in power and were struggling with the terrible economic mess left behind by the previous Labour government.
China was a financial powerhouse that could not be ignored. In 2010, when Cameron won the election, China’s GDP grew by 10.3 per cent, reaching $6.1trillion, and making it the second-largest economy in the world. It was pursuing interests all over the globe, including in Africa and the Far East.
There was a definite sense that if Britain wasn’t part of that, we would be left behind. And so it was a case of holding our noses, and securing those deals.
More than a decade on, and with a bruised and battered Conservative Party staggering towards the end of its tenure in power, was it worth it?
Did all that bowing and scraping win us any serious long-term advantages with Beijing, or have they just regarded our efforts with contempt, exploiting our naivety and mocking us along the way?
If the latest intelligence is correct, very definitely the latter. China sees our liberal democracy as a weakness, and like similar despotic regimes in Iran and Russia, has used it against us. But Beijing also has one distinct advantage over Tehran and Moscow: it has us trapped in a toxic relationship.
Britain is heavily dependent on China for trade. Every year we buy more than £60billion of Chinese goods, from laptops, games consoles and mobile phones to gym equipment, clothes and toys. Even dear old Marks & Sparks, the quintessential British brand, has almost 200 factories in China which it uses to supply clothing and homeware.
Meanwhile, manufacturing at home has dwindled almost to extinction, unable to compete with China’s rock-bottom prices, fuelled by ruthless business practices, appalling working conditions and dirt-cheap — often slave — labour.
How can UK companies, weighed down by endless regulation and red tape, ever compete?
Slowly but surely, we’ve relinquished our manufacturing autonomy to the Chinese — and with it any trace of economic independence.
Never was this more painfully obvious than during Covid, when China’s stranglehold on the production of PPE resulted in dramatic shortages and sky-high prices. Britain did not have the manufacturing base to produce what was needed.
We were heavily reliant on China for these essential resources — and it cost us dear, both financially and politically. It was a similar story with Covid tests.
As a predatory, expansionist regime, China long ago spotted our vulnerabilities. It’s our own greed and stupidity as a short-sighted, voracious consumer society that has led us to this point, where we find ourselves shackled to a ruthless totalitarian regime whose ideology runs counter to everything Britain stands for.
They look at us and they see a nation of soft-bellied layabouts, a bloated service economy, a society so lazy and incompetent we can’t even teach our own children to go to the toilet properly; a country that cares more about the rights of a handful of trans women than it does about the brutal oppression of entire female populations in places such as Iran and Afghanistan; a nation that tears down its own Imperial past to appease marauding woke mobs clad in three-for-a-tenner Shein T-shirts.
They must think we’re soft in the head — and frankly who can blame them?
To them we must seem like a bunch of spoilt children, easily distracted by the sweeties of cheap fast fashion and cut-price electronics. We are hooked on social media and conspiracy theories, addicted to apps such as TikTok — which are accused of stealing our data as they hypnotise us into inertia.
In China, TikTok is banned for children, with good reason. Over here, it’s just another way of keeping us nicely sedated.
In fact, there are moments when I wonder why the Chinese government bothers resorting to espionage at all. Half the time we give away our data for free, on TikTok or in pursuit of ever cheaper piles of plastic rubbish with which to fill our homes.
Take Temu, the cheap-as-chips online Chinese marketplace, where you can buy anything from a tent to a tuxedo for under a fiver. This retail giant is running a giveaway offering Twitter/X users ‘free money’ for new sign-ups.
Too good to be true? Yes. The small print in the ‘Cash Reward’ promotion makes it clear that users agree to give Temu permission to use their ‘photo, name likeness, voice, opinions, statements, biographical information, and/or hometown and state’ worldwide — as well as ‘sharing’ their data with third parties.
In other words, they’ll sell you 1,000 times over — and all in exchange for a bit of tat.
One is reminded of Christopher Columbus exchanging worthless glass trinkets for gold artefacts with the Native American tribes he encountered on his first voyage to the New World. Only now it’s us being led by the nose to the point of extinction.
MPs are right to call for a crackdown on China. But that’s the easy part. Unplugging a British public addicted to a constant supply of cheap Chinese goods is going to be the far greater challenge, especially in a cost-of-living crisis.
And yet that, not fine words in Parliament, is the key to cracking down on China’s abusive behaviour.
In the meantime, you know what they say: beware of Chinese diplomats bearing gifts.
