Luke de Pulford is Executive Director of the IPAC. He writes in a personal capacity.
A peculiar thing happened during the last two Tory leadership races. Suddenly the Party leader had to be tough on China.
This was a truth so universally acknowledged that even famously dove-ish Rishi Sunak’s socials were alive with scary looking China-bad memes and heavy pledges about how he would face up to the Beijing threat on “day one” of his premiership. When he eventually became PM, none of it happened (of course).
And so, here we are again.
In the past week, pretty much every candidate has been boxing tough on China. This isn’t a bad thing in itself, though it would be nice if the superficial hawkery would give way to a nuanced vision. But, in the absence of that policy depth, a bit of healthy electioneering is better than nothing.
The UK desperately needs an opposition that is realistic about Xi’s ambitions.
But with all candidates singing from the same rhetorical hymn sheet, how can members tell the difference? Let’s look at their records, and, for the TLDR crowd, I make no apology for providing ratings from 0 (totally blind to the threat of Xi), to 10 (visionary China realism).
James Cleverly:
Verdict 4/10 – weaker than those who preceded and succeeded him
Cleverly’s recent pitch at the 1922 Committee hustings focused strongly on his record as Foreign Secretary – especially how he had been strong in face-to-face encounters with Chinese diplomats.
This might be true – we don’t know as records aren’t public – but, from a sceptic’s vantage, it’s certainly rose-tinted. Following on from Dominic Raab and Liz Truss, Cleverly took a markedly softer approach.
He was the first Foreign Secretary to visit China in over 5 years. Despite touting the benefits of engagement before his trip to Beijing, Cleverly came away empty handed. While Foreign Secretary, he came into direct conflict with some of his colleagues, mischaracterising them as people who wanted to “pull up the drawbridge” with Beijing. “It’s better to talk than to fight”, he said, as if these were the only two options.
This argument, for those interested, is a classic Foreign Office mandarin constructed straw-man designed to excuse business as usual. The corresponding rumour was that the then Foreign Secretary had fallen prey to his officials. Hard to disagree when, under his leadership of the Foreign Office, ministers were in and out of Hong Kong with a begging bowl, failing to meet with a single civil society group, and even failing to publicly recognise that imprisoned British citizen Jimmy Lai…was indeed a British citizen.
This egregious oversight wasn’t properly rectified until Cameron took over, ironically.
When the Chinese Consul General beat up a Hong Konger in Manchester, Cleverly didn’t name him persona non grata and kick him out, but instead allowed China to recall their diplomats. More worryingly, an internal government document appeared to indicate that all sanctions on Chinese entities and individuals were paused “indefinitely” under his tenure, which went down pretty badly with MPs sanctioned by China.
Kemi Badenoch:
Verdict 6/10 – promising signs but weak Government record
Badenoch’s record is mixed. She has just written a hard hitting piece on renewable dependency, which makes some good points, but the leadership hopeful’s record in government tells a different story. In 2023, she said “China is a country that we do a lot of business with” and should “not be described as a foe, but a challenge”.
As Trade Secretary, Badenoch’s Department was sued a number of times by activist groups claiming that the UK had continued to import Uyghur slave made cotton. Rather than admit the problem and committing to root out slave-made cotton, expensive Government lawyers were commissioned to face down the challenge.
Also in 2023, her Department announced they were renewing their new trade relationship with China, re-starting various bilateral round-tables that were paused after the imposition of the Hong Kong National Security Law.
She has been clear that we can’t meet Net Zero targets without China, but instead of mapping out how to reduce our troubling dependency, she said simply “You can’t exclude Chinese-made products from the battery ecosystem.” Badenoch also stuck closely to the government script in describing China as an “epoch defining challenge” – an uninspiring nonsense-soup of a phrase Sir Iain Duncan Smith called “worse than an episode of Yes Minister”.
Robert Jenrick
Verdict 8/10 – fully awake to the challenge, consistently active since 2019
Back during the Golden Era, it’s probably accurate to describe Jenrick as someone who wanted the UK to take advantage of the Chinese market.
He was involved in a number of bilateral exchanges in around 2015/16 where he was working to develop tech and trade partnerships. But geopolitics in 2015 bears little resemblance to today, and as the world has woken up to the reality of the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, so has Jenrick.
Since 2019, he has been consistent and clear-eyed, writing regularly about the risks of exposure to China, and pushing for a stronger response. In Government he worked closely with Priti Patel to create the welcoming scheme for Hong Kongers fleeing their homes.
He criticised weak sanctions on China, after Beijing sponsored hackers attacked over 40 IPAC MP’s email addresses, and has questioned the incomprehensible decision to continue sending Overseas Development Aid to China. He says it’s “blindingly obvious” China is a threat to the UK. There are many other examples. It’s just a shame that this view wasn’t taken up more broadly while he was in Government.
Tom Tugendhat
Verdict 9/10 – strongest record on China
Say what you like about Tugendhat, his advocacy on China has been prescient, consistent and vocal.
In Government, he spearheaded the National Security and Investment Act, which gives the UK some of the tools needed to confront foreign interference – a huge problem due to the sheer scale of the activity of Beijing’s United Front Work Department.
To an outsider, it felt like the Security Minister did what he could in a Cabinet where his hawkish contributions were, rumour has it, “priced in” to ministerial discussions.
Before Government, he was vocal on Hong Kong, Uyghurs, dependency on the Chinese market, the Belt and Road initiative, and many other issues, even when it wasn’t politically helpful. With Neil O’Brien MP, Tugendhat founded the China Research Group, now defunct, which made him a target of alleged PRC espionage and harassment.
All-in-all, it’s an indisputably strong record. In 2021/22 when the Labour front bench was exceptionally strong on China, he worked well across the aisle. The criticism might be that, as a minister attending Cabinet, he ought to have made more progress. Given the force of opposition to China-realism in the previous Government, though, it’s forgivable.
We also don’t know how much worse things could have been. Taking into account the freefall China policy is enduring under our new-but-very-old-2005-rehash-Mandelson-inspired-Labour-China-strategy, it’s clear that things could have been a lot worse.
All of which is to say – as if it needed saying – that campaign trail rhetoric and what a candidate truly believes are not the same thing. Conservative members have a relatively strong field to choose from in general, and China is far from being the dominant election issue.
But, caveat emptor, members influenced by candidate positions on China would do well to regard campaign promises with extreme scepticism, especially where pledges and records conflict.
