Very British China problems

London's awkward relationship with Beijing, laughing Xi, China launches another aircraft carrier, recommended articles and podcasts etc.

This week’s most important China news and best writing in English on China.

Scan of illustration of The Royal Mint, London in 1830, a building now owned by the Chinese government and the site of its proposed new embassy. Image source: Wikimedia.

This week’s focus

A season of unease over China in the U.K.

China-U.S. relations have been temporarily stabilized by the meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in South Korea on October 30. But in the United Kingdom, nobody seems to quite know how to approach Beijing.

The “golden era” of China-U.K. relations promised in 2015 by then prime minister David Cameron never worked out. The following five occupants of 10 Downing Street, including current prime minister Keir Starmer, have all dithered between welcoming Chinese money and fearing its influence, its espionage, and its manufacturing dominance.

In the last few weeks, three issues have clearly demonstrated the British government’s lack of a vision for relations with China:

The gigantic new Chinese embassy: In October, the British government’s decision on whether to approve China’s application for an enormous new embassy in London was delayed for a second time, with a new deadline of December 10.

China bought the site of the proposed new embassy, the former building and grounds of the Royal Mint in 2018. If it becomes an embassy, it will be Europe’s largest at 215,000 square feet (20,000 sq m). But the project is not popular: There have been protests against it by local residents and U.K.-based dissidents, and both officials and media reports have expressed security concerns about the new embassy’s proximity to telecommunications infrastructure near London’s financial district. The espionage worries were heightened after parts of the construction plans were blanked out.

China’s foreign ministry has warned of “consequences” if the U.K. does not “fulfill its obligation.”

It’s like a bizarro British version of Trump’s TikTok dilemma. The risks and incentives are all mixed up. None of the current options are palatable, so the decision is kicked down the road. British China hawks want to stop the U.K. government approving the embassy with its current plans, and if it is approved, the public and opposition parties are likely to see the government as pandering to China. But with the sad state of the U.K. economy and its even sadder lack of political direction, will Westminster have the nerve to anger Beijing?

The spy debacle: In September 2023, British police arrested a young parliamentary researcher and a friend of his who lived in Beijing for allegedly breaking the Official Secrets Act. The men denied the charges.

The case has now fallen apart, apparently over a legal technicality: Prosecutors said they could not go ahead as the U.K. government hasn’t stated on the record that China is a “national security threat” which makes it impossible to find the accused men guilty of violating the Official Secrets Act, “which is defined as handing over information which might be useful to an enemy.” It should also be added that neither of the men appears to have had any access to British national secrets unless you count parliamentary gossip.

The collapse of the case has left no one happy. The accused men were not given an opportunity to clear their names. Justice was not done if they were in fact guilty. Nothing has been done to address any security threats from China. The opposition Conservative Party has accused the ruling Labour Party of dropping the case to encourage trade and Chinese investment. And Beijing is annoyed.

Academic interference: In February, Sheffield Hallam University ordered a leading academic, Laura Murphy, to cease research on supply chains and forced labour in China, apparently because of pressure from China, and what the Guardian called “commercial factors.”

The university lifted the ban and apologized in October, after threats of legal action, but there is now fresh debate in the U.K. about Chinese influence and harassment of scholars whose work offends Beijing.

The emerging 21st century world order

What all three cases illustrate is the horrible position the British government finds itself in, and its awkward responses which are sometimes self-destructive. London has genuine security concerns. It also needs to placate the Trump administration, which prefers a docile partner in the “special relationship.” But after Brexit, the U.K. needs all the trade and investment it can get. China is indispensable.

Beijing is quite aware of the new power dynamic. Things have changed since 1842, when China ceded Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity after the First Opium War, the memory of which still colors Chinese perceptions of the U.K.

As an editorial by nationalist newspaper Global Times put it in 2013: “We’ve discovered that Britain is easily replaceable in China’s European foreign policy…Moreover, Britain is no longer any kind of ‘big country,’ but merely a country of old Europe suitable for tourism and overseas study, with a few decent football teams” (link to AP report, I was unable to locate the original Chinese piece)

We can expect to see a lot more squirming about China in the U.K. in the months and years to come. But it is not really that different from the China contortions that are going on in the U.S. In fact, most Western countries have not even found the language to talk about a China that has moved to the “center of the global stage,” in the phrase Xi Jinping has been using since 2017.

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After the Trump-Xi meeting

Laughing Xi

Last week, I called the October 30 meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump “underwhelming” and said all it “actually achieved was to pause recently threatened U.S. tariffs and delay the implementation of China’s new export controls on rare earths.” Nothing has emerged since then to really change my mind, but for more detailed analysis, see this compilation of views by Brookings Institute experts: What happened when Trump met Xi? Brookings experts weigh in.

One unexpected fruit of the meeting was a series of unusual candid photographs of Xi Jinping, taken by the White House photographer during the meeting with Trump. Here are three. Make up your own caption.

Trump had a more revealing moment during a speech he gave after his return to the U.S. when he talked admiringly of Xi, and “joked” that he wanted his cabinet and JD Vance to be silent and stiff like the men around the Chinese leader. Here is Fox News video (as tweeted by transpacific grifter Miles Kwok / Guō Wénguì 郭文贵!)

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Around the web

Recommended articles and podcasts

Robots are being commercialized for entertainment and for last-mile delivery in China, according to Robert Wu of Baiguan.

Involution, overcapacity, and China’s economic model: Lizzi Lee on the Sinica Podcast.

How AI is warping the current teaching assessment system for humanities and social sciences: a translation by ChinAI Newsletter.

How a CIA analyst tracked down Chinese politics in the ‘80s with Alice Miller, a podcast and transcript by Liu He of Peking Hotel

“We must depend entirely on ourselves” Policy, politics, and U.S.–China relations at the Fourth Plenum by Neil Thomas and Lobsang Tsering of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

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News roundup

China launches another aircraft carrier

Two grassroots independent Chinese film festivals featuring a huge range of documentaries and features produced in China were scheduled for November this year, in Berlin and New York—I wrote about them for ChinaFile. The Berlin festival ends tomorrow, November 9. The New York event has been canceled after China-based filmmakers were harassed by authorities (film festival statement here).

China has commissioned its first domestically-designed aircraft carrier: The Fujian was commissioned on November 5 at a naval base on southern China’s Hainan island in a ceremony attended by Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping met the leaders of seven countries—South Korea, Japan, Canada, Thailand, Australia, Vietnam, and the Philippines—at the APEC Economic meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea from October 31 to November 1. This happened after his summit with Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea on October 30. (Trump skipped the APEC meeting and flew home after seeing Xi.)

China has shaken up its drug procurement and reimbursement policy, the system through which the government lists certain medicines as standard prescriptions. This guarantees high sales volumes to pharma companies, driving prices down. The new [policy and other related rules, seem intended to avoid too much downward pressure on price in favor of encouraging public access to innovative treatments.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met his Chinese counterpart Dǒng Jūn 董军 in Malaysia on November 1. The next day Hegseth said “Washington and Beijing would establish military-to-military communications channels, adding that bilateral ties between the countries have ‘never been better.’” The Chinese official statement was more restrained: “The defense departments of both countries should take concrete actions to implement the consensus reached by [Xi and Trump] and build a stable and positive military-to-military relationship based on equality, respect, peaceful coexistence, and mutual respect.”

China has increased subsidies to cut energy bills of data centers by up to half “to boost AI” according to the Financial Times.

Starbucks will sell its China operations to Boyu Capital “in a deal that values the business at $4 billion—one of the largest divestments of a China unit by a global consumer company in recent years,” per Reuters.

Halloween crackdown: “On October 31, police deployed in cities across China to prevent people from wearing Halloween costumes, while universities warned students not to celebrate or post Halloween content,” according to Human Rights in China, blaming “the government’s fear of civil society voices and public assembly.”

Flying taxis from Chinese airports in 2028? EHang, which makes drone-like low-altitude passenger aircraft, told the Financial Times that it has plans “to launch airborne services from major airports within three years that will cost as little as $30.”

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