Writing for the Hill on Tuesday, a top British think tank director calls on new prime minister Boris Johnson embrace China. It’s sad to see Chatham House, a former intellectual leader of the liberal international order, now so servile to Beijing.
Sadly, such servility is the only way to understand director Robin Niblett’s words. He says that former Prime Minister Theresa May “quickly learned — as Boris Johnson will — that Britain would benefit greatly from increasing its relatively low level of exports to China, attracting more Chinese investment into U.K. energy and transport infrastructure, and having British financial and service companies participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.”
Wow.
While it’s obvious that Britain would benefit from increased exports to China, it’s tragic to see a call for Britain’s financial sector to support the Belt and Road Initiative. After all, Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative is not an economic project as we would normally perceive it. Instead, it is an initiative designed to displace the American-led international order with a feudal-mercantile order led by Beijing. That is to say, a new order of cronyism, undemocratic governance, and coercive territorial threats in the service of one nation’s interests.
China’s order conflicts absolutely with Chatham House’s mission statement “to help governments and societies build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world.”
Niblett doesn’t care.
“With the Trump administration still calibrating the precise level of its economic sanctions against Huawei, the Johnson government may decide it can also kick the question over the extent of the company’s continued involvement in the UK’s 5G [network] roll-out further down the road,” he writes.
Assessed against the rest of his article, Niblett’s “the Johnson government may decide” comment seems clearly designed as a suggestion rather than an observation.
That matters. British intelligence services have pointed out Huawei’s utility as a Chinese intelligence platform. Thus, in the context of U.S. warnings over what London’s embrace of Huawei would mean for the special relationship, Niblett’s words offer implicit disdain for the special relationship.
To be fair to Chatham House, its donor list does not stand out as being heavily financed by China (although some private donors may be fronts for the Chinese government). And true, not all British foreign policy intellectuals share Niblett’s point of view. But unfortunately, Niblett’s words carry an influence we cannot ignore.
