AI, Trip to the Stans, Closed Chinese Police Stations, Procurement Bill victories
A Beijing to Britain briefing
Hello,
I want to begin this week’s briefing note by opening a discussion around two major global risks facing the British Government over the next 18 months. The first is the existential challenge of how we as a species allow artificial intelligence to evolve in a way that marries tight ethical and security standards with capitalising on innovation. Having met with some of the leading minds in this space last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spent a large part of this week in Washington pressing President Joe Biden to allow the UK to become a leader on the regulatory side of this process, and consequently announced that the UK would hold the world’s first major summit on the issue in the autumn. Why does this matter to us in the China space? For a number of reasons, but as an impressive analyst recently said to me, developing a coherent AI policy is also a sound foreign policy move - if done properly, it would underpin Britain’s claim to be a responsible global actor, and this newly created regulatory framework could perhaps even be exported to other countries as a major soft power win. The speed at which the Government has moved on this complex issue is admirable - it would be brilliant to see it replicated on the UK-China front too.
There is a second risk that is, in my view, still being critically overlooked. In November 2024, Americans go to the polls to vote for their next President. The betting markets have priced the probability of a Donald Trump return next year at 3/1. Two immediate issues arise from this. First, Britain’s foreign - and now industrial - policy is largely underwritten by America, as the recent Integrated Review Refresh spelt out in black and white - “the US…remains the UK’s most important ally and partner.” Second, there is a very good chance that a Trump-Republican-led America will be having to work with a Kier Starmer-Labour-led Britain. It will be of little surprise that these two are not natural bedfellows, and many of the big issues over the next five years (an invasion of Taiwan for example, if US military statements are to be believed) will require tight collaboration between both leaders. While many have spent the last four years choosing not to think about Trump, I worry that not enough resilience has been built into the British foreign policy ecosystem to withstand any potential return. Should the former leader win in 2024, he may well pursue an even more aggressively incoherent China approach married with an overall isolationist attitude. In recent interviews, Trump has accused China of “the rape of America”, while saying in another that “President Xi is a brilliant man: if you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find him.” Speaking to The Financial Times’s Gideon Rachman recently, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy revealed he was working on the assumption that Trump’s China policy is still fairly similar to that of current President Joe Biden. That could be a dangerous assumption indeed.
Moving on to today’s Briefing note, I would make readers aware of a couple of key themes. First, US-UK collaboration on economic statecraft is moving into a new chapter, with immediate knock-on effects for critical minerals among other industries, and market access for British companies. Second, in November 2020, I argued that a “well organised and high profile cross-party campaign could see [Chinese surveillance giant Hikvision] become Huawei 2.0.” This week, the Government set out amendments to the Procurement Bill that will effectively remove Hikvision and Dahua from its procurement supply chain. Third and finally, The Spectator has kindly shared a transcript of an interview between Chinese Whispers host Cindy Yu and China veteran Charlie Parton, who makes a compelling case about why President Xi Jinping will likely not invade Taiwan.
— Sam Hogg, Editor
In this week’s Briefing Note, we look at:
Procurement Bill victory for rebels
Chinese overseas police stations shut
Cindy Yu and Charlie Parton on Taiwan
Peter Mandelson visiting China
Fidelity China Special Situations results