It’s a couple of weeks since the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament issued its scathing report ‘China’, where it outlined the ‘whole-of-state’ infiltration of UK institutions by the Middle Kingdom. Every sector: industry; finance; defence; and universities is penetrated. The veracity of such a report is hard to refute. There can be little doubt that the Chinese government is poking about behind the scenes in our affairs, just as I hope that we are poking about behind the scenes in theirs. The question is not ‘are the Chinese spying on us?’, but ‘why are the Chinese spying on us?’
Your correspondent has made countless visits to China and has only recently returned from there. While not blind to the obvious and inhibiting level of surveillance, the dreadful treatment of certain ethnic minorities and religious groups and their world beating statistics on executions, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a very prosperous and technologically advanced society inhabited by proud and hard-working people. The streets are clean, women don’t tumble out of nightclubs with their underpants in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other, and men don’t seem to think they too can be women. What could the Chinese possibly learn from us?
In almost any organisation or sector they infiltrated, before they got to the nuts and bolts of how that organisation worked, they would have to negotiate the piles of Stonewall documents outlining how the priorities were not to be successful economically or world-leading in any way. Instead, they’d have to read reams of pages on inclusion and diversity and unconscious bias training. Any documents on planning would not be about aims, objectives and strategy but, more likely, about the allocation of gender-neutral toilets and safe spaces for anyone who self-identified as a cat. There would be peals of laughter from the Great Hall of the People ringing out over Tiananmen Square.
Imagine a wee Chinese chappie, let’s call him Wai So Dim, torch in mouth in the small hours of the morning breaking into the office of Andrew Bailey, head of the Bank of England. He picks the lock on the top drawer, pulls out a manila folder, studies the contents and, as the hairs stick up on the back of his head, utters under his breath ‘Ah-so! That’s how they manage inflation…they don’t!’ Meantime Wai So’s colleague in espionage, the beautiful Lay-Mi is getting down to business with a senior civil servant from the Ministry of Defence while trying to extract the UK’s defence strategy from him. Three days later, she dies of exhaustion still not having found out anything.
What must the Chinese think of us? While they emit nearly 30% of the planet’s carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; more than double their nearest competitor the USA (14%), they must find our efforts to go to zero carbon from 1% of world emissions laughable. Can you imagine how Just Stop Oil protesters would be dealt with if they tried to stop the traffic in Tiananmen Square? It didn’t go too well for the last chap who tried to stop the traffic there in 1989; mind you, he did try to stop a tank.
The list of things they must find risible such as, in no particular order, the obsession of our corporations and bodies like the police with flying LGBT+ flags, Greta Thunberg (and she’s not even one of ours), the SNP (who would have been dealt with long ago), the Archbishop of Canterbury, King Charles, Gary Lineker and almost anyone of their ilk who gets into a position of great privilege and then bites the hands that feed them, is surely inexhaustible.
Frankly, it is just unfathomable what the Chinese could possibly think they can learn from us. Their road system stretches for 500 million kilometres with smooth surfaces while our half a million kilometres is barely navigable for potholes in places; their extensive rail system runs with barely a glitch while ours barely runs, and their car industry is producing so many e-cars that they have actually had to slow down production.
It is easy to laugh at our own pathetic efforts to claim a stake at the top table of world affairs and stay ahead of the curve on all manner of woke and climate catastrophising initiatives. Our response to Covid-19 was nothing short of disastrous (but so it was in most countries) and free speech is genuinely under threat (but it is non-existent in China). Our country is, let’s face it, a shambles. But, given the choice between living in China or the UK I imagine most people would—as would your correspondent—always choose the latter. Perhaps the Chinese could learn that and ponder.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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