AP
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer suddenly decides to pivot on relations with the Middle Kingdom
The last British leader to officially meet with the president of the PRC was Theresa May, and that meeting took place in 2018. At the time, Beijing (with all its Eastern flair) declared the British Prime Minister’s visit the beginning of a «golden era» in Sino-British relations. Within a year, that era had begun to wither and rot after China’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. Then the Uighur issue in Xinjiang was raised again, and the collective West, including England, declared that it had grounds to accuse China of human rights violations. In short, it didn’t work.
This story continues to this day. From the West looking East, there’s no need to even express an opinion: China is active, aggressive, and capable of crushing many European economies under its sheer weight. This is why the newly elected president of the United States has not been shy about describing China as a rival and planning to impose such import tariffs — ranging from 20 to 40 percent — that trade would lose all meaning. In essence, this amounts to a declaration of a trade war. A casus belli, whichever way you look at it.
And suddenly, the United States’ closest and oldest ally — Great Britain — makes a surprise move. Even before he left for the G20 summit in Brazil, Keir Starmer announced that he intended to have an in-depth conversation with the Chinese leader on the sidelines of the summit.
«We need a consistent, robust and respectful relationship with China», Starmer said before leaving for Brazil. «Our bilateral contacts are important not just for us, but for the wider international community. Britain will be a predictable actor and we want our relationship to be as free of surprises as possible».
So there you have it. It seems that the British Prime Minister is even offering to act as a de facto mediator between China — which everyone increasingly fears — and the West. In his view, it’s enough to take the lead and try to control the dragon. A dragon that is already present in Europe and whose swishing tail is unsettling everyone.
«China and Britain have huge opportunities for cooperation in many areas — trade, investment, clean energy, financial services, healthcare and improving the welfare of our people», the Prime Minister added.
Interesting. Trade goes on without waiting for Starmer’s input — British shops, like everywhere else in the world, are filled with Chinese goods. As for clean energy, the Chinese have long dismissed it, the British health service can’t be revived with a defibrillator, and the «prosperity of our peoples» is mostly growing in that region — you know which one. Certainly not in England.
Nevertheless, Starmer has decided — no time to lose, as the saying goes — to send his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, to Beijing. She is to meet with Vice Premier He Lifeng. From the British point of view, he’s the second most important person in the Chinese State Council — or so they think. In any case, she’ll be talking to him. Early next year, Starmer plans to start a kind of «financial-economic dialogue» — that is, to establish full-fledged communication at the state level — either by going to Beijing himself or by hosting Xi in London.
You can imagine the reaction in Westminster! What about our beloved Uyghurs and human rights? What about all the issues in the South China Sea, Taiwan, our common interests in Hong Kong, parliamentary sanctions? «The Prime Minister is even questioning Jimmy Lai’s health», some exclaim. In England, the Lai case is being followed very closely.
Jimmy Lai is a Hong Kong entrepreneur with a British passport who published the popular newspaper Apple Daily and ran a media holding that supported the 2019 anti-China protests in Hong Kong. For this, he’s now in prison at the age of 74.
Curiously, the judges in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district who convicted Lai are ethnic Chinese. Yet they preside in 17th-century English robes and London-style wigs, in keeping with tradition, and the lawyers do not call themselves lawyers or attorneys, but use the English term barrister. Just a small detail for aficionados.
But never mind the Parliament. On what should be a smooth, silky road for Starmer’s trip to China, a modest, thin man with glasses steps forward. On any given day on London’s Regent Street, he’d blend into the crowd. But this man is Ken McCallum, the head of the domestic security service MI5. He is responsible for, among other things, the security of the United Kingdom.
His agency’s staff prepared a report with an unequivocal conclusion: China hasn’t even considered slowing down its espionage activities in Britain — why should it? Over the past five years, MI5 has uncovered 20,000 cases of industrial espionage by the British in favor of China. Simply through social networks, people with access to even slightly sensitive or valuable information are now surrounded by Chinese agents who are extracting whatever they can-any scrap of information.
«These people, we’ve found, are university graduates, participants in academic programs, founders of startups and innovative companies. They generally don’t even think that national security has anything to do with them. But starting in 2023, we’ve come to the conclusion that if they don’t care about geopolitics, geopolitics will care about them», Ken McCallum told a conference of the informal Anglo-Saxon intelligence alliance known as the Five Eyes.
At the same conference, held in Silicon Valley, current FBI Director Christopher Wray noted that the threat from China has become «more dangerous and more insidious».
«The FBI is conducting more than 2,000 investigations in the area of intellectual property», said the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. «And all the threads, one way or another, lead back to China. Every 12 hours, my agency opens a new case against China».
Against this whole background, Keir Starmer’s «knight’s move» to China, with such bold statements, makes one think. Does he really intend to open a «new portal» from Europe to China and back? To try to control the expansion of the Chinese market into the Old World? To play the role of mediator? To become a «problem solver» in the future trade war between the Trump administration and China?
Most likely, that’s exactly what it will be. For now, let’s wait for the new year and the results of the fascinating Anglo-Chinese summit.