June 27 2025 - 7:00am
The Labour government’s year-long China Audit was completed this week. But rather than publish the document for all to see, the interested public had to be content with a statement in the Commons from Foreign Secretary David Lammy. “We cannot deal with China’s complexity unless we improve our capability to understand it,” he said on Tuesday.
Between Lammy’s statement and other strategy documents, Westminster’s conclusion is essentially that dealing with China is complicated. That is true, but the parliamentary debate following the statement brought home how far matters still need to go. In response to the Foreign Secretary, his shadow Priti Patel described the current government as going “cap in hand” to Beijing to compensate for its own alleged mishandling of the UK economy. Lammy’s reply provided a long list of the perceived failings of successive Conservative governments on China policy. In other words, partisanship trumped serious discussion.
Admittedly, the speed at which China’s influence has grown has inevitably made it difficult for governments to formulate a coherent strategy. Nonetheless, the longer poor-quality debate persists, the harder it will be for Britain to address the threats posed by Chinese espionage, transnational repression, and cyber and influence operations. Likewise, it will become increasingly difficult to develop mechanisms for taking advantage of Chinese trade and investment while protecting British firms from unfair competition.
The political point-scoring was punctuated by considered discussion of specific issues. These ranged from higher education (the economic importance of Chinese students versus risks of technology transfer) to human rights (Beijing’s record in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Tibet, as well as its pursuit of dissidents abroad, including in the UK) to national security threats (dual-use technologies and risks of surveillance and leverage from Chinese digital systems). When informed debate does occur, it focuses on specific issues in isolation from the bigger picture.
Judging by the Parliamentary footage, this debate on the first serious attempt by a UK government to put forward a systematic approach to China drew only a few dozen politicians. Beijing presents one of Britain’s greatest challenges across foreign, economic, and security policy. So why the indifference?
At root, this is attributable to a lack of baseline knowledge and a persistent belief that there is something about China which makes it inherently too complex to engage with if one is not an expert. This creates fertile ground for polarized and uninformed debate which falls short of the level of rigor Britain needs if it is to adapt to a world of increasing Chinese influence. For Parliament to effectively foster scrutiny of China policy and hold the Government to account, it requires informed engagement founded on bipartisan recognition of the magnitude of the challenges Beijing presents.
What Westminster often gets right is its discussion of China’s troubling human rights record, particularly in Hong Kong and on the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. But this knowledge appears to be isolated from wider consideration of China’s geopolitical role and power relative to the UK. The result is an entirely unworkable position that calls for no engagement with the world’s second-largest economy purely on principle, or which relies on unrealistic faith in Britain’s ability to influence China’s domestic affairs.
There are choices to be made about how and when to engage with Beijing. But without publication of at least some concrete findings and the methods of the Government’s China audit, those choices could be misguided. The most fleshed-out recommendation Lammy announced was an increase in funding for improving China expertise. Some of that ought to be spent in Parliament.
William Matthews is a researcher specialising in China and the international order. He has a background in anthropology and comparative social science and writes on Substack.
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