In which my kleptomania reaches record levels

Yes, alas, the post you are about to read has been stolen in its entirety from the pen of the redoubtable Jeremy Warner and the pages of The Telegraph.  Sorry, Jeremy, but there is no way a hacker like me could distil your exceedingly thoughtful piece on future Brit-Sino relations.  It needs to be read in full and discussed at length, even if, irritatingly, it takes exactly the opposite line to my own.  Just for now, I will simply reprint your column and perhaps tomorrow, when I have had time to dwell on it, I will offer up my response - "a poor thing, Sir, but mine own!"

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It was meant to be a new “golden age” of relations with China. Trade and investment between our nations would flourish; the City would bring transparency and accountability to China’s belt and road initiative, and facilitate the country’s reserve currency aspirations. In return for helping ease China’s path to global respectability, Britain would gain high-level access to its fast-growing markets; the two would partner on infrastructure and much else besides.

But then along came Covid-19 and everything changed. Deteriorating relations with China long predate the virus but as on much else, it has greatly exacerbated the trend.  For many, it has been the final straw, demonstrating once and for all both that China is not to be trusted and that it is too alien to Western values ever to be fully integrated into the global order.

Within the Conservative Party, there has been a steady shift from the great kowtow under David Cameron and George Osborne, through the muddled thinking of Theresa May – who at first paused Chinese involvement in Britain’s nuclear power programme but then caved in – to today’s now overt manifestations of Sinophobia, with a number of prominent Tories calling for a complete rethink in relations.

A new pressure group, the China Research Group (CRG), modelled on the hard-line pro-Brexit European Research Group, has gathered growing support since it was launched last month. There is an obvious irony here because if the UK is leaving the EU to pursue a “global Britain” agenda, then to begin by ostracising the world’s biggest growth market looks a very odd way of going about it. Yet it would be wrong to see the CRG as a mere reincarnation of the ERG – Euroscepticism transmogrified as it were into Sinoscepticism now that the battle for Brexit has been won.

Worryingly for China apologists, the CRG attracts support from across the spectrum, including many Remainers and centrists. Dean Godson, director of the think tank Policy Exchange, divides them into eight different but overlapping strands of thought: pro-Brexit Atlanticists such as Iain Duncan Smith who worry that accommodating Chinese interests will jeopardise the chances of a free trade deal with the US, as well as intelligence sharing arrangements in the “five eyes” Anglosphere; those like William Hague and Damian Green who think that if China is to be embraced it must be made to abide by the rules of the international order; liberal internationalists such as Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee; libertarians like David Davis, who object to Chinese authoritarianism on principle; human rights activists; protectionists, who like Donald Trump think China undermines Western jobs; anti-globalists such as Nick Timothy; and finally those who encompass all these concerns.

As can be seen, that’s a mighty powerful alliance of interests, which any prime minister, never mind one as beholden to populist forces as Boris Johnson, would find very hard to resist. While Johnson was laid out on his sick bed, Dominic Raab, acting prime minister, said there needed to be a “deep dive” into China’s handling of coronavirus and warned: “We can’t have business as usual.” Johnson finds himself bulldozed by forces he may be powerless to control.

Yet resist Johnson must. Despite his famous “f--- business” remark during the heat of the Brexit debate, the Prime Minister is philosophically very pro-business in his outlook, and though many Remainers might find this hard to believe, he is also a pragmatist.

Both these attributes were on show for what was a very gutsy decision, shortly before Covid hit, to allow Huawei to participate in the 5G roll-out. To have done anything else would admittedly have been very difficult. The train had left the station; it would have cost the big mobile phone operators billions to strip out all the Huawei equipment already installed, and would have set 5G back at least two years.

Even so, Johnson risked quite a bit of political capital with his decision, which felt like a betrayal to many backbenchers, similar in some respects to May allowing continued Chinese participation in new nuclear plant building.

He will have to expend a great deal more getting the Telecoms Security Bill through the Commons this summer in unamended form.
Both these decisions were substantially influenced by senior civil servants, heavily invested as they are in the previous, pro-Chinese policy.
At the height of the Brexit paralysis, Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, organised a Beijing junket for his permanent secretaries; they are said to have felt quite at home among Chinese peers, and not a little jealous of their counterparts’ lack of democratic accountability. They are not called “mandarins” for nothing.

We might mistrust the Chinese, be suspicious of their motives and ambitions, find their disregard for human rights repugnant, and their use of surveillance offensive, but this cannot be allowed to act as a barrier to doing business with them.

If these standards were universally applied, you would end up trading with no one. Do we cease business with Saudi Arabia because it has a petulant and intolerant ruler with murderous underlings to do his bidding? No, we determine what is in our best interests and act accordingly.

However alien we might find the Chinese regime, it is not about to collapse or go away. Ostracising it won’t bring about its demise; it will only make us poorer, and other goals, such as those on climate change, virtually impossible.

An independent Britain cannot any more afford its China policy to be dictated by Trump as an increasingly Sinophobe European Union.
The UK is already the go-to place in Europe for Chinese investment. Chinese investors have not seen Brexit as any kind of deterrent.
Nobody should be under any illusions. China is for China; there is not an ounce of altruism in anything it does. It practises a form of economic nationalism quite without precedent in the modern age. We must be ready to call Chinese interests out where appropriate, and act accordingly. But demonising them at one and the same time as fighting Europe in the vague hope of favours from the US is no kind of an economic strategy for the future.

Britain’s opportunity is rather that of bridging these divides and creating a new form of multilateralism that encompasses trade, climate, economic and healthcare policy. Channel Covid into that kind of endeavour, rather than futile anti-Chinese sentiment, and maybe something positive might eventually come out of it.

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I will attempt a commentary on this tomorrow but feel free to offer your own.

 

 

Comments

[Pat]

A prime requirement for trading with anyone is trust. Will they deliver what they promised?.Will they cheat or steal?
The Saudis have earned that trust, obnoxious as they are.
The Chinese were given it and chose to abuse it. Stealing copyrights for ages, delivering faulty goods, hiding then lying about the lurgy.
And whatever theoretical profits are to be made from the trade, we know they will break their promises any time it suits them.
So by all means buy novelties, fashion garments and such.
But don't manufacture there or you'll get ripped off. And these days there's cheaper labour elsewhere.
Don't rely on them for anything you'd really miss, like medicines or face masks.
And don't have them supply anything that would allow them to hold us to ransom, like a power station we can't do without, or a communication network which we will depend on to be both secure and reliable.
It's not just their trustworthiness, its also their competence. Much what is made in China is shoddy.
Oh and I note the expectation that China will help the fight against global warming. China is building coal fired power stations like billy-oh. I don't think they believe the theory at all, though they are quite happy letting us impoverish ourselves. They can supply all the metals we want at a good profit for them because they use cheap and reliable energy from coal. If we really are concerned about CO² emissions that alone would justify boycotting China.

[Pat]

The turning point for China is best seen in Hong Kong.
For a century successive Chinese governments, some of them seriously obnoxious, observed the treaties regarding that place.
The current Chinese administration is ignoring it's obligations.
The current Chinese government cannot be trusted.

[Loz]

Been puzzling this one for a while: Someone explain to me why India isn't competing effectively with China for our desire for low cost labour intensive crapulata that we can't make any more for the pittance it pays?

Look at the GDP growth charts ...

http://m.statisticstimes.com/economy/china-vs-india-economy.php

I know China lies about GDP yada-yada blah-blah, but not enough to explain away the huge difference in the economies per capita and their comparative growth over the last few decades.

If only India would lift its game and give China a run for their money. Labour costs in India are a fraction of China's yet all the iThingy and landfill fodder factories go to China - why?

China actually taxes it's peeps to Western standards now they can afford it, not as hard as the Euros but up near the 40% mark like Blighty. India doesn't, it has one of the lowest tax takes as a percentage of GDP in the world around 15%, the reason being everyone is so skint any tax above 15% would literally starve millions to death. We saw this hand-to-mouth existence by their reaction to the lockdown - the city populations decamped after 2 days because their hand-to-mouth buying power ran out without work so they walked to the countryside to stay with relatives near the food source.

What's wrong with India that it can't develop as fast as China? That global capital doesn't trust it as a place to do business as much as China, even though India is a functioning democracy with 15% only state sector / tax take and China is a socialist dictatorship with a 40% state sector / tax take?

I don't get it.

If the Don's Posse is to make headway with China then someone needs to get it, and get India onboard as the iThingy factories and crapulata swapout location for the West. That would really hit the Chinese commies where it hurts.

SoD

[Doonhamer]

To SoD's comment. India has a caste system, like Pakistan.
In it no matter how brilliant and hard working a low caste will never do well, without emigrating, when they do quite well.
Meanwhile, among the Uppers, no matter how thick one is a senior position is always assured. Bit like British military and civil service, among whom I include the BBC, NHS. (I was going to add "used to be." to that last sentence, but. ....)

[Doonhamer]

Literary allusions. A poor thing.
Dear Mr Duff, thank you for the little quotes you sprinkle among your issue.
Your introduction had me off rooting (and not in an Australasian fashion) through the Interwebs.
And there I found "copulatives". A gem of a moniker.
One could use it in place of the Anglo-Saxon equivalent and your target would not know he (hardly ever a "she") had been insulted.
Until later, even more delicious.

[Loz]

But China has its own caste system, the Hukou ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou

It hampers China's development also, so why still the 2-5x income per capita/GDP per capita gap?

SoD

[Whitewall]

Europe has these as well:
https://campusreform.org/?ID=14847

Universities have been and are a major ally of China. All about money.

[Jack the dog]

A very good question SoD it puzzles me as well.

Counterintuitively it seems easier to do business with China. They just get on with it. So trust but verify.

The Indians I have tried to deal with talk a good game, but it seldom leads to anything.

[Robert the Biker]

"Sinophobia"
They were quick getting that one invented, mustn't have any badthink or unpalatable truths here, someone might get offended.

[Whitewall]

"Sinophobia"
Now is a good time to relearn how to offend the right enemies. Both the China commies and the PC commies as they are closely related.

[Loz]

Jack the Dog,

I'm starting to think it might be a cultural thing too. On the basis of ruling out everything else.

How frustrating! Imagine if they had a "just get on with it" attitude too. I bet you could've negotiated some of those Chinese contracts down a tad!

So much for the British Empire hammering Market Economics, Free Trade and the Common Law into them. Doesn't seem to have done them any good whatsoever. They're a bit like a not-quite-so-bad-but-not-far-off Africa.

Culture is a very complex entanglement of ways, mores, habits, angles, attitudes, and received wisdoms, I think. Like one of those elastic band balls you see in bored bureaucrats' offices. Such a poorly understood subject too, studied to buggery by the lefties but nothing really learned or gained of course - just wokery ammo and political axe grinding. And off limits to any independent free-thinking academic inspection for the same woke and political correctness reasons, like not-quite-so-bad-but-not-far-off race and genetics.

Anyway, moving rapidly along I guess.

SoD

[Whitewall]

"Trust but verify".
Trust only this- “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” The capitalism of China’s dictatorship is taking various sectors of the globe economically — which means also militarily — for China’s dictatorship, and the free West is helping China to make that rope with which to hang capitalism and the free West."

No way around this unless the Chinese people can eliminate the Communists.