Which Chinese companies "can't be trusted", amendments, Xinjiang, TikTok
A Beijing to Britain briefing
Hello,
The three most prominent security threats perceived by Britons are, in order, climate change, terrorism, and the rise of China as a world power. Indeed, they now view Beijing as a comparable threat with Moscow. That’s according to new research released this week. Furthermore, 81% of Brits do not trust China to act responsibly in the world, and just 19% support any UK-China economic engagement. On the same day the polling was released, a Telegraph article on a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan was retweeted thousands of times. As we warned over a year ago, it remains our view that China will become the foreign policy issue in any upcoming election.
Downing Street’s focus right now does not extend in this direction. Top of the agenda is dealing keeping the Prime Minister in power, then stagflation and a cost of living crisis. To this end, there’s been little from the top of Government reflecting on how a global recession will impact many of the countries the UK has recently become interested in (re)developing relations with. As Chatham House’s David Lawrence recently observed, “it’s quite hard to address whatever international challenges we face while you are battling your own political party.”
In the City, TikTok find themselves at the end of yet another damaging story. As HSBC has become the go-to bank for MPs and Peers to criticise on Hong Kong, so this social media firm finds itself becoming the lightening rod for their concerns over data flows to Beijing. Trickier for TikTok is that the company gave evidence to MPs last March on data flow concerns and presented a fairly punchy defence against accusations of sending data to China. On this theme of trust - the verdict is in from the UK’s top official on surveillance cameras: Hikvision and Dahua “simply cannot be trusted." We unpack the reasoning behind these comments and note that despite this assessment, multiple Government Departments continue to use their kit.
Welcome to ‘Beijing to Britain’ - a weekly overview of the ebbs and flows of the discussion in Westminster and the City around the UK’s relationship with China, and how it impacts politics, the private sector and society.