Auditing the audit: why the UK remains adrift on China

Britain's Labour government has avoided hard choices and clear statements of intent about Beijing in favour of short-term policy flexibility

I’m usually wary of analysing foreign policy statements and strategy documents, which are often a substitute for strategy rather than a genuine effort to craft long-term policy.

But, having been asked to feed into the UK government’s China Audit, I feel I should respond to the outcomes of the process. That is rather difficult, given that the government has decided not to publish the audit.

So my musings are informed by what David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, said in the House of Commons today, the brief mentions of China in the National Security Strategy, the Industrial Strategy and the Strategic Defence Review, and a background briefing from senior officials.

Firstly, and notwithstanding my opening sentence, I think it’s a mistake not to publish the China Audit in some form. This was a great chance for the Labour government to set out serious thinking, shape the national debate about China, and signal our position to Beijing, our allies and other partners in Asia. That can be done privately and in parliamentary speeches but would be much more impactful in one big bang.

Additionally, as the UK government says, China is a whole-of-society challenge (and opportunity). So we need to better inform the business community, universities, the media and the wider public about the risks and rewards of engaging with Beijing, and how China will affect the UK’s place in the world. Publishing a paper on how the UK sees China affecting its national interests could have been very helpful in this regard.

I have no doubt that our diplomats and security experts have the sagacity to do so without needlessly antagonising Donald Trump and the Chinese Communist Party, or giving away state secrets. Lammy stated that “much of the audit was conducted at a high classification and that most of the detail is not disclosable without damaging our national interests”. But there is so much high-quality, open-source information available about China that it is hard to believe that is the main reason for a lack of publication.

In terms of the content, or what we know of it, the TLDR is: China is complicated and the UK will act in its national interest. Much of the released content is sensible and hard to disagree with.

That is, perhaps, progress after the UK flipped from the “golden era” lens of David Cameron to the over-securitisation of later Conservative governments, all based on strategic naivety and a lack of deep understanding. But today’s update falls far short of the clarity that the UK needs on China.

Although Labour in opposition used the “three Cs” of “cooperate, compete, challenge” to frame the relationship with China, this been dropped, with Lammy acknowledging that China’s global role defies simple characterisations.

While the UK faces important and uncomfortable trade-offs about our economic relationship with China, from electrical vehicles to renewable energy, there is a whiff of freshly-baked cakeism about the Audit. Lammy refers to the need for “secure trade and growth. But, in the medium term, security and growth are in tension, when it comes to doing business with China. It would be better to acknowledge that and talk to businesses and the public about some of the difficult choices the country is facing.

The announcement of more financial support for China capabilities in government is good. But, given China’s size and global impact, the government needs to go beyond ensuring more “mandarins speak Mandarin”, as Lammy put it. Of course, diplomats going to China and other country specialists need to learn the language.

However, given the years required to master even basic Mandarin, it may be more effective to invest in educational programmes about how the Chinese Communist Party operates and thinks pitched at a much wider cohort of civil servants. I’ve spoken on a few existing China capability courses but they are still mostly targeted at specialists.

More broadly, the government needs to invest in China capabilities outside of government. The government’s announcement that it will bring together “existing guidance on China in a new gov.uk hub” is far from sufficient to meet the scale of the challenge set out today.

As someone who believes that much foreign policy is driven by domestic politics, none of this is surprising. The Labour Party announced the China audit in its manifesto before the general election last July. It was a way to suggest that the Conservatives had got China wrong without binding Labour into any particular position that might divide its supporters or voters, or upset Beijing or Washington. It was a classic case of kicking a tricky problem into the long grass.

But the China challenge is long term and needs to be addressed in a time-frame and manner that goes way beyond the usual rhythms and cycles of party politics.

Many smart people inside and outside government contributed to the Audit but civil servants can’t, rightly, do more than their political masters want them to. In a difficult, dangerous and unpredictable world, the government doesn’t want to be constrained by publishing a more comprehensive statement about its approach to China. That is understandable politically in the short term. But I think it’s a mistake.

Rather than just criticise, I want to be constructive. My colleagues and I at Chatham House will in the next month or so be publishing some policy research setting out how we think, even in these tough times, the UK can pursue a clearer and more effective approach to China and the broader Indo-Pacific.