Report

Living with the Dragon

Think tank: Civitas

Author(s): Various authors

October 14, 2024

This report from UK think tank Civitas examines what a coherent UK policy towards China would look like.

China is becoming the most serious challenge to UK and the West, due to its economic growth, military strength, and fast-developing foreign policy in relation to its territorial claims and record on human rights. These developments are as significant a priority for new British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour colleagues as they were for their Conservative predecessors.

Our response to this challenge so far – both in the UK and more widely across Western democracies – remains piecemeal, disconnected, and lacking a long-term strategic vision. This essay collection aims to remedy this failing through a consideration of leading cross-government policies and recommendations – covering the challenges to our prosperity, trade and investment, our international approach and human rights record, our national defences and security framework, through to our universities and emerging technologies such as genomics.

This essay collection first seeks to lay out clearly what China’s agenda is, in its own words. Critically, it also examines the creation of a dependency which has ensured that foreign governments cannot adopt policies inimical to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interests. Others have described the CCP is a highly impactful perpetrator of transnational repression – cross-border interference with the exercise of basic rights – in the UK.

It is argued we should not deflect from the very real problems with China’s human rights record and the challenges these pose to our relationship. However, we too are the problem. Too often in the West, we seem to have an intrinsic challenge in our lack of resilience or even of belief in our civilisational values.

One Labour MP and leading intellectual on the Left suggests in this collection we need a new Office of Economic Statecraft to coordinate the intelligence, economic models and plans for economic resilience and security. Another contribution suggests policymakers should also link future supply chain policies with national security strategies.

The benefits of continued economic engagement are significant. So too are the risks and dependencies that such engagement can generate. Crafting policy that furthers all British interests – those of economics, security, and values – is difficult. New technologies and the shifting policy choices of our allies and of China call for novel and adaptive policy responses. We already know more detailed and accurate research information is required in government examining CCP interference, including the practices of the United Front Work Department.

In terms of our international partners, further contributions address whether the UK’s American and European allies can align their priorities and objectives in Eurasia, in which an integrated Eurasian Rimland coalition could be capable of containing Chinese expansionist objectives. Others suggest Taiwan’s continued exclusion from the world stage frustrates knowledge exchange and cooperation and helps justify Beijing’s expansionist claims.

It is concluded by the editors that we have some tactics, but no strategy. Working with friends and allies around the world, the time has come to develop such a strategy.