On Oct 16, 2022, black-clad provocateurs, including Hong Kong secessionists, assembled outside China’s consulate in Manchester. They displayed inflammatory placards, designed to provoke a reaction from the diplomats inside. In the ensuing scuffle, one of their number (“Bob Chan”) sustained a minor injury. His backers in London then sought to portray the incident as the worst outrage Manchester had witnessed since the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 (when the local militia killed 18 protesters and injured hundreds of others).
Leading the charge in 2022 were the ideologues, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the infamous myth spreader, and Benedict Rogers, the serial fantasist who co-founded Hong Kong Watch, the anti-China propaganda outfit (whose patrons include the former Hong Kong governor, Chris Patten).
Although it is a crime in England to display to another “any writing, sign or other visible representation” that is abusive or insulting (Public Order Act 1986), none of the provocateurs was ever prosecuted, for unexplained reasons. Instead, the victims of the provocations were portrayed as the culprits, with Rogers bizarrely accusing the diplomats of “barbaric, repressive rule on our streets”, a trope recycled by the right-wing media.
The strategy of Duncan Smith, Rogers, and their ilk could not have been clearer, and it set the scene for what was to come. As rabid believers in United States hegemony, they are determined to malign China at every opportunity and to prevent the United Kingdom from developing closer ties with it. Following the election on July 3 of a Labour government committed to improving Anglo-Chinese relations, they have moved into top gear.
Apart from propaganda, these US proxies stoke fears within the UK about China, regardless of the collateral damage. Chinese people who live and work in Britain increasingly find themselves on the receiving end, one example being Christine Lee Ching-kui.
In 1974, Lee, aged 11, moved with her family to the UK from China and subsequently forged a highly successful career for herself. Having qualified as a solicitor, she established her own law firm in 1990 and provided immigration advisory services. She lobbied politicians on behalf of Britain’s Chinese community and, for many, became their voice.
Lee actively promoted Anglo-Chinese relations and supported a Labour member of parliament, Barry Gardiner, in whose office her son, Daniel Wilkes, was employed. As the rules required, Gardiner declared her support in the parliamentary Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Through the British Chinese Project, Lee excelled as a goodwill ambassador for China-UK relations, and successfully promoted the traditionally low-key Chinese community. In 2019, her work was recognized with an award from the then-prime minister, Theresa May, at No 10 Downing Street. She was named one of No 10’s “Points of Light” for her work with the British Chinese Project.
In a congratulatory letter, May said Lee “should feel very proud of the difference that the British Chinese Project is making in promoting engagement, understanding, and cooperation between the Chinese and British communities in the UK”, and many agreed.
May also wished her “well with your work to further the inclusion and participation of British-Chinese people in the UK political system”. This, however, was the last thing some people wanted to hear, particularly as she was previously an adviser to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office in Beijing. Once Lee’s detractors moved against her in 2022, May’s endorsement counted for nothing.
The British domestic security service, MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5), accused Lee of “political interference activities” (not spying), and warned that she was a suspected Chinese agent, which triggered consequences. After receiving rape and death threats, she was forced to go into hiding, while her son’s parliamentary security access was revoked.
Lee, a Christian, vehemently denied the allegations, but the view had clearly been taken that it was unacceptable for people like her to convey perspectives that were other than hostile to China to people like Gardiner. Whereas, as the BBC reported (July 19, 2022), the authorities made every effort to find enough evidence to justify prosecuting Lee, “they drew a blank”.
Although, on Dec 17 last year, Lee lost her human rights challenge to MI5’s treatment of her before a tribunal (courts invariably accept its risk assessments), the presiding judge, Lord Justice Singh, did at least confirm that there had been no “authoritative finding” that she had engaged in criminal activity or other misconduct (MI5’s warning having only been “preventative”).
This, however, was cold comfort for Lee, whose reputation was in tatters. Duncan Smith even weighed in, suggesting she should be deported (despite having lived in the UK for 50 years). Her son lost his job, and Gardiner, his political prospects blighted (he was previously the Labour Party’s shadow business secretary), was publicly derided as “Beijing Barry”.
Once Lee had been put through the grinder, any UK-based Chinese (British citizen or otherwise) who wanted closer ties between the two countries found themselves in the firing line. If they did not stay silent, they were at risk of receiving the proverbial knock on the door at dawn.
The latest target is Chris Yang Tengbo, who had a close business relationship with King Charles’ brother, Prince Andrew. Yang represented the prince in his dealings with potential investors in China, which was wholly legitimate. He headed Hampton Group International, a lobbying firm that advised British companies on their affairs in China, putting him in the firing line.
This was despite his firm having, for example, facilitated a deal, clearly in the UK’s interest, whereby Gordonstoun School, the King’s alma mater, was enabled to open five branches in different parts of China, including Hong Kong (because of the furor, Gordonstoun has terminated its relationship with Hampton Group International, a setback for British soft power).
After MI5 accused Yang of spying, he was banned from entering the UK in 2023, despite his longstanding links, because it was deemed “conducive to public good”.
Having studied at the University of York in 2003, Yang was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2013, which he calls his “second home”. Although Yang denied the claim (“entirely untrue”) and plans to appeal against his exclusion, Duncan Smith was ecstatic, claiming the allegations were “the tip of the iceberg” of Chinese influence in the UK.
Once again, there was no suggestion that Yang had committed any criminal offense. However, this no longer matters if people are suspected of the deadly sin of encouraging more mature attitudes toward China.
As it is now open season on such people, an interpreter who previously did freelance work for the UK Foreign Office when Chinese dignitaries visited Britain, Chen Shirong, was also targeted. On Dec 14, he was accused by “UK-China Transparency” of operating a website that formed part of China’s “propaganda” and enjoying, despite his lowly status, high-level access in the Foreign Office.
Chen previously worked as a journalist and commentator for the BBC World Service and has lived in the UK for 34 years. Like Yang, he regards Britain as his “second home”. However, this provided no protection once the witch-hunters came knocking, particularly as he had previously liaised with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (which he readily acknowledged, although contact ended in 2018).
However, unlike MI5, UK-China Transparency chose its words carefully. It said it did “not allege any illegal activity” on his part, and did not suggest he “misled” the Foreign Office or “broke any agreement” with it. Instead, it relied on smears, knowing that the anti-China lobby would take things from there.
Right on cue, the former security minister, Tom Tugendhat, pounced (he it was who, in 2019, called for the British judges to be withdrawn from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal and has since become Hong Kong Watch poster boy). Having launched a tirade about Chinese attempts “to influence the highest levels of the British government”, he called on the Foreign Office to “recognize the challenge of vetting people and training Britons to work as translators, not just rely on others”.
Acting like an MI5 outrider, UK-China Transparency claims to provide “more and better information about ties between the UK and China”. In reality, like Hong Kong Watch, its business is besmirching Beijing, and stoking anti-China sentiments in the UK. This should surprise nobody, given its “advisors” include the likes of Simon Cheng Man-kit and Dr David Tobin.
Cheng is best remembered in Hong Kong for his antics in Shenzhen while working for the British Consulate-General (hence, the Foreign Office).
While visiting Shenzhen in 2019, Cheng was apprehended for soliciting prostitutes, which he admitted. However, he changed his tune on release and besmirched the Shenzhen authorities. He was then handed a British passport, and has been slandering China ever since from his London base.
Tobin is an academic who was called to testify before the infamous London-based “Uyghur Tribunal” in 2021 as part of its efforts to show that China wanted to eliminate the Uyghurs as a unique ethnic group. Although the tribunal claimed to be independent, it was anything but, with its chairman, Sir Geoffrey Nice, being a Hong Kong Watch patron. Moreover, its “external advisor” was Baroness Helena Kennedy, a renowned China critic (she was also subsequently made a Hong Kong Watch patron by Rogers for her services).
It is little wonder that an organization “advised” by the likes of Cheng and Tobin should target somebody like Chen Shirong for his positive China messaging.
Be that as it may, once the various allegations surfaced, they were trumpeted by the usual suspects. On Dec 16, Duncan Smith and Tugendhat demanded that China be “immediately” designated as a “threat” to the UK. Tugendhat revealed that MI5 had told the government that if it failed to designate China as a threat under the enhanced tier of Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), it would not be worth having.
FIRS was introduced by the UK’s draconian National Security Act 2023. If a country is declared to be a threat to national security, anybody who works for it has to register their activities. Therefore, to place China on the enhanced tier would inevitably be viewed as a hostile act by Beijing. It would derail the improving relationship between the two countries, which is exactly what the China hawks want to see.
They would like nothing more than to sabotage the imminent China visit by the UK’s finance minister, Rachel Reeves. She and her delegation will be discussing capital markets, financial regulation, connectivity between financial and bond markets, and clean energy. The visit will restart an economic dialogue that lapsed in 2019 and benefit both countries.
However, observers have noted that MI5 is now very much a law unto itself, and wants to impose its China-hostile agenda on the government, collateral damage notwithstanding. In 2023, its head, Ken McCallum, while visiting the US for a meeting with the security heads of the Five Eyes alliance, claimed Chinese espionage had reached an “epic scale”, with British businesses being at particular risk.
However, McCallum must have choked on his cornflakes when his Australian counterpart, Mike Burgess, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, told the assembled spooks that “All nations spy” (something they all knew but never admitted). The UK, like its partners, does everything it can to exercise influence abroad and promote its position, often covertly, and nobody should be taken in by McCallum’s “holier than thou” pontificating.
What he finds anathema is the idea that British and Chinese companies should share their technology, learn from each other and enhance their cooperation, seeing such exchanges as a threat to national security.
However, his zealotry will hopefully not take him down the same path as his Australian counterparts.
Last February, Di Sanh Duong, a Vietnam-born businessman, ethnic Chinese community leader and former Liberal Party candidate, became the first person to be convicted of planning to commit an act of foreign interference in Australia. He received 2 years 9 months’ imprisonment under the foreign interference law for “cozying up” to a government minister, Alan Tudge.
As the BBC reported on Dec 18, a crucial issue at trial was whether, when Duong said Tudge’s attendance at a charity event would benefit “us Chinese”, he meant Australia’s Chinese community or China itself (the court decided the latter, hence his downfall).
As with Lee, Yang and Chen in the UK, the authorities sought to link Duong to the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The UFWD’s role in crafting positive messages about China, countering fallacies and ensuring that China is properly understood by the people that matter, is regarded as the ultimate sin by the security services in both Britain and Australia.
Not surprisingly, Duong’s conviction triggered concerns over anti-espionage laws being weaponized against ethnic Chinese citizens. Many Chinese-Australians feel they are facing increasing scrutiny because of their ethnicity, which is understandable.
In October, for example, when three Chinese-Australians testified before a Senate inquiry about the problems faced by migrant communities, each was asked to “condemn” the CPC. As other witnesses had not been asked this, they objected. One of them, Yun Jiang, tweeted, “This felt less like a public inquiry and more like a public witch-hunt”.
Another witness, Osmond Chiu, likened his experience to that undergone by those forced to “prove their loyalty” when called before the US Senate committee, chaired by Senator Joe McCarthy, investigating “Un-American” activities in the 1950s.
If this is the direction of travel that MI5 envisages for the UK under its National Security Act 2023 (which also contains a foreign interference offense, punishable with 14 years’ imprisonment), then woe betide the UK’s ethnic Chinese community. Given the law’s stringent terms, even the courts may be unable to protect them from persecution.
However, some Chinese in the UK need have no fears. Criminal fugitives from Hong Kong, like Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Finn Lau Cho-dik, have not only been welcomed but allowed to continue pursuing their anti-China activities on British soil. Even though, with their US links, they have sought to undermine China in different ways, including by influencing politicians to adopt hostile stances and impose punitive sanctions, MI5 has done nothing to curb their activities.
Although MI5’s mandate, as with its counterparts, involves protecting British national security interests and neutralizing anybody trying to harm the country, it must not overstep the mark. It does not extend to persecuting Chinese individuals who are seeking closer ties between London and Beijing, trying to help British businesses to navigate the China market, and enabling people to appreciate the China story.
If MI5 does not understand this, its oversight body, the Joint Intelligence Committee, must rein McCallum in. However, it may not be easy, as he has carved out a mini-empire for himself, and would resent any attempts to clip his wings. Whereas MI5 had a budget in 2021-22 of 3.71 billion pounds ($4.65 billion), it employs over 5,000 people and occupies grandiose premises in Central London, and it likes to go its own way.
Even if McCallum feels he has to justify its existence, the targeting of people like Lee, Yang and Chen is overkill and an abuse of authority.
However, although parliamentarians like Duncan Smith and Tugendhat are happy enough to follow McCallum’s lead, the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is proving a harder nut to crack.
As a former human rights lawyer and top prosecutor, he cannot be happy to see ethnic Chinese being targeted on the flimsiest of evidence.
Moreover, when Starmer met President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit in Brazil in November, he assured him that the UK would be “a predictable and pragmatic partner”, which incensed the anti-China brigade.
On Dec 16, Starmer defended his policy of seeking constructive relations with China. He said it was “better to engage, to challenge, than to stay aside”, meaning he knows what is good for Britain (including, he stressed, on climate change). He is resisting calls to declare China a threat to national security, which suggests he has seen through the recent scare stories.
As the banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, have explained, to designate China as a threat would have profound economic and trade implications for the UK. It would also poison relations at a time when greater cooperation is crucial for global development, climate protection, and political harmony.
On Dec 17, the Chinese embassy in London urged “the UK side to immediately stop creating trouble, stop anti-China political manipulations, and stop undermining normal personnel exchanges between China and the UK”, and Starmer was hopefully listening.
Everybody who believes in the British national interest must hope that Starmer will resist the pressures from the fanatics and remain true to himself. If he were to abandon his commitment to improved ties with Beijing, the UK would be the big loser, culturally, economically and politically. Although a breakdown in relations would delight Duncan Smith, Tugendhat and McCallum, it would not be a price worth paying.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
