Enfeoffed to China: Britain’s national security for sale

There are plenty of people in the United Kingdom who say that the UK is imbecilic to accept so much Chinese investment and sell so much of its critical infrastructure to China. The UK has cosied up to China, which everyone knows is a hostile state. The United Kingdom has almost sold its national security. Much Chinese technology bought by the UK may have a ‘kill switch’, meaning China could turn it off if relations turn really sour. China is the world’s second-largest economy and was slated until a few years ago to overtake the USA in the 2030s. Therefore, it is not surprising that the United Kingdom considered it sound policy to seek decent relations with China.

The United Kingdom is accepting ever more Chinese investment. Huawei supplies much of the UK telecommunications network. The Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) is one of the biggest banks on British high streets. HSBC bought out Midland Bank in 2000. HSBC also has branches in other countries, such as all over Latin America.

Since the credit crunch of 2008, the United Kingdom has never had excellent economic growth. It has averaged 1.5%. The UK desperately sought Chinese investment and more trade with China. David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, and his Conservative Government announced the ‘golden era’ of relations with China. President Xi was invited on a state visit. This is the highest expression of friendship between nation-states. Human rights activists said it was a tragedy that such a cruel tyrant should be accorded this honour. His Majesty’s Government soft-pedals criticism of China even today for fear of jeopardising commerce and investment. There are those who say that it is nonsense to claim that toning down such rhetoric leads to more money being made. China trades with the UK not out of any ideological sympathy but simply to make a profit. The last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, is one of those who takes this view.

The United Kingdom receives tens of thousands of Chinese tourists. Many engaged couples come for wedding photos at iconic sites such as Big Ben. Chinese shoppers are often big spenders. China is the UK’s third-biggest trade partner after the EU and the USA. If one takes the EU as 27 separate countries and not a single entity, then China is the single biggest trade partner of the United Kingdom. It is not hard to understand the crucial importance of this for the British.

Chinese students are the single largest contingent of overseas students studying in British universities. In some universities, they comprise 25% of the student body.

Many Britons have voiced their concern about overweening Chinese sway in universities. Academics are told not to pursue research that is uncongenial to the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese Government is widely accused of not letting the genocide against the Uyghurs be known to the outside world.

The University of Cambridge is heavily reliant on funding from the PRC. Ten per cent of Cambridge students are from the PRC.

Whenever someone denounces human rights abuses committed by the Chinese regime, Beijing responds by calling it ‘anti-China’ and saying it is impairing diplomatic relations.

The PRC is also accused of spying in the United Kingdom, and of course, the UK is accused of conducting counter-espionage in the PRC. One of Prince Andrew’s business associates was a well-known Chinese businessman, Yang Tengbo, who was thought to be a spy. Mr Yang now lives in the PRC and has no intention of returning to the UK.

In 2024, the United Kingdom busted a Chinese spy ring. Matthew Trickett was a white British former serviceman arrested on suspicion of spying for the PRC. His alleged crime was not thought to be too serious, and he was released on bail. He was found dead in a park in Maidenhead, 30 km west of London, days later. Why would a healthy 37-year-old man drop dead? There is an adage: dead men tell no tales. His sudden death was very convenient for China. Trickett had been working for the Home Office in an immigration role at the time of his arrest. The coroner ruled the death ‘unexplained’ and could not say whether it was suicide or a natural death.

MI5 took the unusual step of naming someone as a suspected agent of influence for a foreign power. Christine Lee is a British citizen of Chinese birth who worked as a lawyer and regularly visited Parliament. Miss Lee denied the accusation. MI5 is the British domestic intelligence service.

Two white Britons were arrested in 2025 and charged with spying on behalf of the PRC in Parliament. Both had worked as English teachers in China. Charges were dropped because the UK Government refused officially to label China a ‘hostile state’, which was central to the prosecution's case.

There are also instances of British politicians, technologists, and former military officers being approached via LinkedIn by people based in Hong Kong, purportedly for a job interview in Hong Kong at an attractive salary and with generous perks, with the work to be done remotely from the UK. The job interviews are said to turn out to be an indirect plea to spy for China. Several well-known commentators on security matters in the United Kingdom have publicly related their experiences of such attempts at recruitment. The Chinese intelligence service suggests Hong Kong rather than Mainland China as an interview venue, as Britons are less suspicious of Hong Kong.

Ten per cent of Chinese adults are members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The higher one goes in any organisation, the higher this percentage. The CCP has little use for unskilled labourers. Members of the CCP swear lifelong blind loyalty to the Party. They will do anything for the furtherance of the CCP’s agenda. It is thought that many Chinese business executives in the UK are members of the CCP. A great deal of Chinese espionage in the UK concerns economic matters and technology.

Chinese students in UK universities sometimes demonstrate against Chinese protesters. China is accused of stage-managing demonstrations at which people gather to chant pro-regime slogans and excoriate those in China who call for multiparty democracy, free expression, the release of political prisoners, an end to torture, and an end to the death penalty, especially for offences less than murder.

China is said even to have operated unofficial police stations in the United Kingdom. The Chinese police officers in the UK do not wear uniforms, carry truncheons, or handcuff people. But Chinese citizens in the UK are ordered to report to certain buildings to file paperwork or be questioned. If they do not comply, their relatives in China will suffer through other means.

The UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, recently visited China to promote commerce. He said very little about human rights. He did not even call for the release of Jimmy Lai. Lai is a British citizen of Chinese origin who is serving a life sentence in the PRC for expressing opinions disobliging to the Chinese regime. China does not allow dual citizenship; therefore, Lai is not a Chinese national. It is true that China is entitled to frame its own laws and run its own courts. That does not mean that Britain should remain silent when one of its citizens suffers terrible injustice in a flagrantly politicised judicial system.

Starmer signed trade agreements in Beijing. The PRC also said Britons may now visit the country visa-free.

The United Kingdom is only 1% ethnically Chinese. Many of these people are British citizens. Some came directly from Mainland China, but many are overseas Chinese who came from Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, or even Australia.

In 2021, China deprived the Hong Kongers of their civil liberties. In 1987, the United Kingdom agreed to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 with the proviso that Hong Kong’s rights would be honoured for at least 50 years. By 1997, Hong Kong had free expression, including demonstrations and strikes, and independent courts, which is why banks were based there. There was no death penalty, and even allegations of torture were unknown. Beijing said that Hong Kong would be a Special Administrative Region of China. The slogan was: one country, two systems. Hong Kong would be permitted to retain its political system, which had made it an economic supernova.

As time passed, the PRC insidiously removed Hong Kong’s freedoms. Political parties were gradually banned. Those elected to the Legislative Council were obliged to swear allegiance to China. In protest, some deliberately mispronounced China as ‘Chee NA’. More mainlanders moved in. Cantonese was downgraded, and Mandarin was upgraded. Advocating independence for Hong Kong became punishable by life imprisonment. As the law had allowed some free expression in Hong Kong, the Chinese authorities decided that this could not be tolerated. People in Hong Kong started to suffer refoulement to Mainland China, where they could be severely punished for telling the truth.

Demonstrations in Hong Kong kept Beijing from stripping the people of all their rights. But in 2020, the COVID lockdown made such protests impossible. Beijing took the opportunity to take away freedom from Hong Kong.

The United Kingdom has offered the status of British National (Overseas) (BNO) to Hong Kongers born there before the 1997 handover. BNOs could visit the UK visa-free but did not have the right to live in the United Kingdom, nor was BNO status heritable. In 2021, the UK said that, in view of China's reneging on its legally binding obligations, London would allow BNOs to settle in the United Kingdom. BNOs could bring their non-BNO spouses and children. 150,000 BNOs and their first-degree relatives came to live in the UK. In 2026, they are eligible for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). ILR is the right to reside in the UK permanently, even if they are unemployed or retired.

Of the BNOs who moved to the United Kingdom over the last five years, the great majority are sincere immigrants seeking a better life. They value their freedom. But MI5 suspects that a handful are in fact pro-regime and were instructed to apply for settlement in the United Kingdom with a view to engaging in espionage.

In 2026, the United Kingdom approved a new Chinese Embassy. It is in the old Royal Mint building opposite the Tower of London. The Conservative Party vigorously opposed the approval, saying that the new Chinese Embassy is right beside cables that carry crucial financial information for the City of London. Moreover, the embassy has various basement rooms with unspecified uses in the plans. It is suspected that these will be used for detention or espionage purposes.

The Chinese Embassy is Chinese sovereign territory. The British authorities would have no right to enter it without written permission from Beijing. Even if China were to sign a legally binding treaty not to use these blacked-out rooms on the blueprint for the embassy for espionage or to detain people, the Chinese could break this with impunity. There would be no enforcement mechanism.

Lord Charles Banner is the UK’s top planning barrister and a Conservative politician. Banner is a university friend of Rishi Sunak. Lord Banner spoke out against the folly of allowing China to use the Royal Mint building as an embassy, as outlined in the plans China submitted.

There is no doubt that the PRC runs a truly brutal regime. Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been locked up in concentration camps. For years, Beijing lied about the existence of such places. Then it claimed that the lucky inmates of such places were really students undergoing re-education. The reality is totally different. They are performing slave labour to enrich Chinese corporations. The Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim people. File hacks have revealed that Uyghurs are incarcerated without trial or charged with heinous crimes such as growing a beard or visiting another Muslim country.

Genocide against the Uyghurs takes different forms. In slave labour camps, men and women are separated. The UN Genocide Convention states that policies to prevent births are tantamount to genocide. Moreover, Uyghur women are often subjected to forced abortion. There is also deracination. The Chinese Government tries to extirpate Uyghur identity and to deprive them of their collective individuality. Aspects of their culture are outlawed. They are forced to listen to hours-long harangues and chant slogans over and over again to brainwash them.

The Uyghurs were independent in the 1940s. They are a nation by almost any definition. But any call for independence is punishable by life imprisonment.

London and Beijing are poles apart on many issues. They are almost diametrically opposed on the Ukraine war. The United Kingdom is the foremost armourer of Ukraine now that the USA has drastically cut military aid. China is selling dual-use technology to Russia, which Russia then deploys for military purposes in the illegally occupied regions of Ukraine. The UK led the charge in the United Nations to denounce Russia’s unprovoked war of illegal aggression against Ukraine. China abstained on the motion. It jealously guards its own territorial integrity and sovereignty, but will not say a word about Ukraine’s rights being trampled upon. China’s purchase of Russian oil, gas, coal, and other minerals has been indispensable in enabling the Kremlin to fund its war effort.

In China, even theft can be cause for punishment by death. Admittedly, only very large-scale theft receives the death penalty. But nonetheless, people are executed for non-violent offences. Trials are not known to be fair. China executes more people than the whole of the rest of the world put together. The organs of the executed are then sold.

China is a surveillance state. There are CCTV cameras everywhere with facial-recognition technology. People can receive good citizen points for meritorious acts.

It is the depth of cynicism that Pakistan should be such a close ally of China. Pakistan was founded as a homeland for Muslims and proclaims solidarity with the Ummah. It furiously calls out the mistreatment of Muslims in other countries except, of course, in China, and that includes silence on the case of the Uyghurs.

It is certainly true that the PRC has achieved some magnificent results. It has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It has transformed its economy. China is a superpower, and that was unimaginable 50 years ago. None of this justifies the heavy oppression and inhumane violence that the PRC inflicts on its people.

The UK Government is staggeringly purblind and obtuse in that it has enfeoffed itself to China. National security is severely compromised. The Chinese would never be so asinine as to allow the same to be done to them.