Why isn’t China a pariah state?

Published by The i paper (8th January, 2025)

A few days before Christmas, a Chinese ship started its engines in the freezing waters between Denmark and Sweden and sailed off, leaving a global furore in its wake. 

It is thought that the previous month Yi Peng 3 had deliberately severed two fibre-optic data cables lying on the Baltic seabed 100 miles apart by dragging its anchor over them.  “Nobody believes that these cables were cut accidentally,” said Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius. Not least when the bulk carrier’s transponder was turned off at the time of the two incidents and there was a similar “accident” with a Chinese ship damaging a Baltic gas pipeline the previous year.

Pistorius talked about a “hybrid” act of sabotage while carefully avoiding blame. This looked like a classic “grey zone” incident, hard to pin down as a deliberate attack by a hostile nation while hovering in that uneasy space between peace and all-out war. 

There are reports that the ship’s captain attacked at the behest of Russian intelligence; certainly while it was stopped at anchor, one of Moscow’s naval vessels arrived to electronically snoop on Scandinavian investigators. Despite pledging cooperation, Beijing refused to let prosecutors board the freighter before confirming its departure to “ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of the crew”.

This was far from a unique attack. On Christmas Day, an oil tanker sailing to Russia broke a power line between Finland and Estonia while severing seabed internet cables – those vulnerable links so critical for modern societies. 

Yet the Yi Peng 3 incident exposed with the greatest clarity how the dictatorships in China and Russia work closely together – and sometimes in tandem with other rogue states – in their efforts to crush democracy and destroy freedom. This has exploded into a full-scale war with Vladimir Putin’s blood-soaked assault on Ukraine, enabled by China and now joined militarily by Beijing’s client state of North Korea.

Yet we are seeing also many of these grey-zone actions flaring up in Europe – and they show how the West is under attack from this pair of repulsive autocracies.

China was the senior partner in this unholy alliance of dictatorships even before Putin wounded his nation so badly with an idiotic attack on Ukraine – and having wiped out freedom in Hong Kong, threatened the thriving democracy in Taiwan under its egotistical leader Xi Jinping.

That gung-ho arrogance on display in the Baltic was seen also with his cover-up of the Covid pandemic origins. Yet how depressing that after the launch of devastating war in Europe, damaging grey-zone attacks and repeated red flags waved by alarmed defence and intelligence chiefs, our complacent political leaders still think they must appease Communist Party goons in Beijing in the hope of winning a few contracts and securing a few jobs. 

This month Chancellor Rachel Reeves, struggling to spark growth in Britain’s economy, will fly to China to plead for a few crumbs from Xi’s table. She talks of being a “hard-headed economic realist” in her mission to boost trade with Beijing and will be joined by Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England boss, to underline its importance.

To show the meaning of “realism” on this front, private sector talks will be led by Mark Tucker, chairman of HSBC – a bank that endorsed the draconian security law used to stifle freedom in Hong Kong, then shut accounts of activists in the pro-democracy movement including those of media tycoon Jimmy Lai, a British citizen. Yet all too typically, its chief executive Noel Quinn – accused by MPs of assisting Communist repression before recently standing down – was handed a knighthood in the New Year honours.

Reeves is following in the footsteps of Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who insists Britain will prioritise national security in forging stronger economic ties as part of Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge of a ‘pragmatic’ approach to China. 

Labour came to power promising a more consistent stance after all the flip-flopping seen under the Tories, based on an “audit” of relations with the country seen by security services as our biggest security threat. It was due to be published within 100 days of taking office. Now we find the results of this review postponed until after the Chancellor’s visit, chunks of it will be kept secret and there are reports that it is being pared back into a typical Whitehall box-ticking exercise to ensure it does not upset Beijing. 

The Government has delayed implementation of the foreign influence registration scheme, introduced by its predecessor in a national security revamp while refusing to say if it will put China in the enhanced category for threats.

This all smacks of appeasement of a country actively engaged in attacks against democracy, from the battlefields of Ukraine and the front lines of global diplomacy through to assaults on our digital, educational, financial and industrial citadels.

MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum called their espionage “a sustained campaign on a pretty epic scale” when joining the heads of US, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand security agencies to warn about commercial secrets being stolen by China. More recently, we have learned that its spying tentacles allegedly reached into both Parliament and the Royal Family, while its digital warriors have targeted the US Treasury and leading politicians.

From the Baltic Sea to Hong Kong, we see the real face of Xi’s dictatorship as it attacks democracy and disrupts the peace that is so key to economic growth while hiding behind soothing words of diplomacy and talk of stronger ties. It is prepared to stop at nothing to become the dominant world power – although its repression of Tibetans and Uyghurs alone should have made it a global pariah. 

Now its economy is floundering and there are growing social tensions, especially among frustrated younger generations. So instead of prostrating themselves before the despotic Red Emperor and his loyal minions, the likes of Reeves and Lammy should be doing everything possible to weaken China’s ties to Britain and undermine this duplicitous autocracy so deeply hostile to our way of life. 

Categorised in: China, home feature, World