Ex-Security Advisor Warns Whitehall Lacks Expertise to Tackle China

Lord Ricketts (left) was the UK’s first national security adviser (Alamy)

4 min read24 November

Starmer this week said he wanted to build a more “serious and pragmatic” relationship with Beijing after he became the first British leader in six years to meet with Chinese Community Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping. 

The Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves have set out to pursue a closer relationship with the world’s second-largest economy to help it achieve its core mission of stronger domestic growth. The latter is set to visit China in 2025 to meet with her counterpart Vice Premier He Lifeng.

The strategy is a contentious one. Some MPs, including senior figures like former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, argue the UK should not be pursuing closer ties with China while it commits human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims, undermines democracy in Hong Kong and poses cyber threats to Britain.

The Labour Government argues, however, that it can improve economic ties with China while also protecting the UK’s national interests and challenging Beijing on those issues.

Speaking to PoliticsHome, Ricketts said that while he had sympathy with Starmer’s approach, he believed Whitehall lacked real institutional knowledge of China compared to the 1990s when the UK was in the process of relinquishing Hong Kong to China.

“There was a strong cadre of China specialists, both because we provided the governor in Hong Kong, his staff,” he said, referring to the handover on July 1, 1997.

“We’d been negotiating with the Chinese over the future of Hong Kong ever since 1984, so the Foreign Office had a very strong team of China specialists who spoke Chinese, who’d worked in China, [and] worked in Hong Kong.

“That’s a smaller pool now of people because we don’t have that throughput of people.

“There certainly are still deep specialists in China working in the foreign office,” he added, referring to Caroline Wilson who is the current ambassador to China.

“But beyond the Foreign Office, across Whitehall, probably, [there is] not as much of a cadre of experts on China as we should have.”

The senior diplomat warned that trying to shun China – which some Conservative MPs like Duncan Smith have urged successive governments to do – would be a “massive” step for any British government to take given the size of its economy. 

“China is the second largest economy in the world,” he told PoliticsHome.

“It’s a huge issue, whether you’re looking at security, economic commercial issues or climate change, it’s a very complex issue. To sum it up in one word is always very difficult,” he said.

Ricketts spent 40 years as a British diplomat, including as the UK ambassador to France, before retiring in 2016. During that time, he served as the UK’s first national security adviser under former Conservative prime minister David Cameron.

Cameron in 2011 promised a “golden” age of Anglo-Sino relations and four years later Xi made his first and only state visit to the UK when he met Queen Elizabeth II and visited Manchester City football club.

The relationship between the British and Chinese governments has deteriorated since then, however. China has imposed sanctions on nine UK citizens, including three current Tory MPs, while the 2021 strategic defence review called the nation a “systematic competitor”.

Lord Ricketts said the then-UK government was not necessarily naive to believe their partnership would blossom, but China changed course and had different objectives.

“At the time, it was a reasonable policy to be taken. I say that because the presidents before Xi Jinping — Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin — for perhaps 15 years were presidents of China who were in favour of commercial relations of the West,” he said.

“China was still growing its economy. They saw China’s future as a partner working with other Western countries. They joined the World Trade Organization.

“They were, of course, always competitive, but they were a constructive player in the world economy because they saw that as in Chinese interests.

“What changed was not that Western policy was wrong. It was that Xi Jinping arrived. And with the arrival of Xi Jinping in 2011, he started to take a much harder, more aggressive line towards the West and Western economic system.”

The long-term threat to the UK from China, said the former diplomat, is espionage and stealing “intellectual property.”

In March, Duncan Smith, then-Conservative MP Tim Loughton and then-SNP MP Stewart McDonald faced apparent hacking attempts from businesses owned by the CCP. Sky News reported in May that China had hacked the Ministry of Defence where there was subsequently a major data breach.

While the threat during the Cold War from Russia was more covert, Lord Ricketts told PoliticsHome he believed the sustained threat from China would look at stealing intellectual property and its focus on trying to influence British public opinion.

“It’s really that that they’re into,” he said, “having people who can speak for the Chinese case”.

“[They will focus on] people who can influence British opinion, some intimidation of Chinese residents [and] Chinese dissidents here, critics of the Chinese regime, and hoovering up as many of our of our trade secrets, technology secrets.”

“That is the primary threat we would face from China.”

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