The Labor Party’s 2024 election manifesto made just one mention of China, promising an “audit” of the United Kingdom’s relationship with Beijing. Whereas the Conservatives were accused of an inconsistent, “flip-flop” approach to China, Labor’s audit would be the basis for a more stable, clear-eyed approach to one of the defining foreign policy challenges of our time.
Or so the theory went. Five months on, the audit appears to be mired in delays, in-fighting and backpedalling. We now know that the audit has been pushed back until after Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ visit to Beijing next month, despite plans to publish it beforehand. Pending further delays, the audit will only be finished in the spring, and even then only partially available to the public. Behind closed doors, civil servants are at pains to manage expectations, stressing that the audit is merely a review of internal processes, not policies or – God forbid – strategy.
If this pattern continues, the trajectory of the new government’s China policy could be set well before Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s much vaunted audit sees the light of day. Already the cracks are beginning to appear, with Cabinet ministers each pursuing their own paths to Beijing. Without the unifying starting point the audit was meant to provide, Labor risks the same inconsistency and incoherence of previous Conservative governments toward China.
Reeves’ upcoming visit to Beijing, where she plans to relaunch the Economic and Financial Dialogue with China, is perhaps the most blatant affront to the aims and intent of the China audit. First and foremost, there appears to have been no assessment of the optics of restarting a dialogue that was suspended in 2020 following Beijing’s brutal crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The crackdown was a clear breach of China’s treaty agreements with the United Kingdom on Hong Kong, and as the continued imprisonment of British national Jimmy Lai shows, things have gotten worse rather than better since then. Sacrificing the U.K.’s commitment to the people of Hong Kong for the prospect of increased pork exports to China is, at the very least, a strange interpretation of Lammy’s self-professed “progressive realist” approach.
Second, Reeves’ visit appears oblivious to one of the key questions of the audit, which was meant to answer how London could better manage the national security risks inherent in closer economic engagement with China. Chinese investors, including China’s sovereign wealth fund, already own significant stakes in the U.K.’s critical national infrastructure, from water to nuclear energy, airports, and railway networks. At the same time, the United Kingdom is heavily dependent on China’s supply chains for nearly every technology needed for the green transition. Many of these, such as electric vehicles, also come with significant cybersecurity vulnerabilities and risk undercutting British manufacturers through large state subsidies.
With the audit still ongoing, it is not at all obvious whether the chancellor is visiting Beijing with a clear sense of which parts of Britain are for sale and which are off limits. Just this week it was revealed that a Chinese firm developing chips for use in advanced AI weapons systems was able to buy access to cutting-edge U.K. technology. Once let go of, competitive advantages cannot be easily recovered. China has a track record of using technology transfers to leapfrog other countries in the development of strategic technologies, eventually undercutting global markets and putting other players out of business. Failing to set clear redlines today will only harm the U.K.’s future economic wellbeing and national security – the exact opposite of Reeves’ short-lived “securonomics.”
Above all of this, Prime Minister Keir Starmer seems unaware or uninterested in his government’s position on China. Starmer bungled his way through his G-20 meeting with President Xi Jinping, seemingly not noticing when Chinese officials removed British press from the room. He later appeared unsure on what line to take on the sentencing of 45 opposition politicians in Hong Kong, refusing to condemn the sentencing even after the Foreign Office had already done so.
As Energy Secretary Edward Miliband announces plans to follow the chancellor’s footsteps and visit Beijing in early 2025, the prime minister appears to be the only Cabinet member still waiting for the audit to finish – conveniently citing the ongoing review to dodge awkward questions on Prince Andrew’s links to an alleged Chinese spy. With Donald Trump coming back into the White House and China ramping up its military threats against Taiwan, Starmer’s seeming disinterest in China cannot continue.
The onus is on Labor to get the audit back on track. Any further delays and the audit may as well be a post-mortem of yet another failed approach to build a coherent China strategy. The foreign secretary must wrest back control from an attempted watering down by civil servants, who have more or less been tasked with marking their own homework.
Anything less than a comprehensive evaluation of the full range of economic, security and strategic risks posed by the rise of China will have been a waste of taxpayer time and money. Key to this is engaging with groups outside of Whitehall, which so far has been limited and tokenistic.In particular, the audit must listen to the concerns of the large and growing British Chinese and Hong Kong diaspora, many of whom are increasingly frustrated with the government’s approach. To win over these voters, the government must show that it can follow through with a clear-eyed and resolute approach to China.