London
—
A humdrum workplace that stood subsequent to an Amazon warehouse on an industrial property in Oxfordshire, southern England, was for a few years a essential line of protection in Britain’s nationwide safety. “The Cell,” because the workplace was identified, allowed the UK authorities to maintain a cautious eye on the operations of Huawei, the Chinese tech big, because it constructed out Britain’s cellular networks.
Owned by Huawei but staffed by British cybersecurity consultants with the best ranges of safety clearance, “The Cell” was tasked – at Huawei’s expense – with checking every bit of {hardware} and software program for strings of code that might be exploited for malicious functions.
In the top, nonetheless, that uncommon association did not salve Britain’s wariness about how the Chinese authorities may use Huawei’s tools. After a decade of permitting Huawei to construct a footprint within the nation, the British authorities introduced in 2020 that it will ban Huawei from the nation’s 5G community, as a parliamentary inquiry concluded in the identical 12 months that there was “clear evidence of collusion” between Huawei and the “Chinese Communist Party apparatus.” The firm’s 5G tools already put in should be eliminated by subsequent 12 months.
“The Cell” now stands as a monument to the tough trade-offs that Britain faces in navigating its relations with China, because it struggles to stability the security concerns of its intelligence companies with the non-public sector’s want for affordable know-how and the federal government’s hope for financial uplift.
Analysts and former diplomats instructed NCS that successive British governments have did not strike the proper stability on China, leading to a coverage characterised by distrust, skittishness and incoherence.
The query of the UK’s relationship with China has develop into extra urgent amid US President Donald Trump’s upending of the US-dominated world order, which has spurred some Western allies to hunt to diversify their buying and selling companions and cut back their reliance on the United States. As increasingly more Britons query the worth of the much-vaunted “special relationship” with Washington, Prime Minister Keir Starmer will on Wednesday develop into the primary British chief to go to China in eight years.
In an interview with Bloomberg News forward of his departure, Starmer mentioned he wouldn’t be obliged to “choose” between relations with the United States or China. Although the UK will preserve “close ties” with the US on business and safety, Starmer mentioned that “sticking your head in the sand and ignoring China… wouldn’t be sensible.” He mentioned his go to to the nation may convey “significant opportunities” for British companies.
A spokesperson for China’s overseas ministry mentioned Starmer’s go to supplies Beijing “an opportunity to enhance mutual trust” with the UK, and will “open a new chapter of health and stable development in UK-China relations.”
Starmer’s journey comes a week after Britain green-lit plans for China to construct a “mega” embassy near London’s monetary district. The determination was delayed for months as a result of fears amongst lawmakers that the sprawling advanced, which can sit close to fiber-optic cables carrying delicate knowledge for monetary companies, may pose safety dangers.
Britain’s intelligence companies issued no particular warnings in regards to the embassy, but have lengthy warned of the risk that China poses extra broadly.
“Do Chinese state actors present a UK national security threat? The answer is, of course, yes they do, every day,” Ken McCallum, the pinnacle of the home spy service MI5, mentioned in October. A 2023 evaluation termed China an “epoch-defining challenge” to Britain.
Despite these fears, Starmer’s Labour authorities got here to energy with a pledge to place UK relations with China on a firmer footing. In its 2024 manifesto, Labour pledged to finish “14 years of damaging Conservative inconsistency over China,” providing as a substitute a “long-term and strategic approach to managing our relations.” To that finish, the federal government commissioned an audit of what it referred to as “our most complex bilateral relationship.”
When the audit was lastly unveiled – not on time – lawmakers had been left none the wiser as to the important thing particulars of Britain’s method to China.
“Much of the audit was conducted at a high classification and most of the detail is not disclosable without damaging our national interests,” then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy instructed parliament in June.
The result’s a coverage of “omertá,” which means a code of silence, in line with Charles Parton, a former British diplomat who spent greater than twenty years engaged on China.
“If you want to have a proper strategy which people understand and pull in the same direction, then they need to know what your strategy is – and they haven’t revealed it,” Parton instructed NCS.
The tradeoffs, he mentioned, stay invidious: “There are four things they’re balancing: National security, which they declare as their number one priority; economic prosperity; environmental concerns; and public and parliamentary opinion. You’re never going to get cheers from all of those four sides.”
Britain as soon as, nonetheless, thought it may have all of it. Starting in 2010, the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his finance minister, George Osborne, closely courted Beijing and positioned what has since been termed a geopolitical “bet on China.”
Osborne, who visited Beijing commonly, tried to place London’s monetary district as a gateway for Chinese cash into Europe and helped safe funding in British nuclear energy stations. By 2015, forward of Chinese chief Xi Jinping’s state go to to Britain, Cameron proclaimed a “golden era” of relations with Beijing. During the go to, the prime minister took Xi for a pint at a Sixteenth-century pub close to his official nation retreat in Buckinghamshire, west of London.
But issues quickly started to unravel. Osborne’s hope of turning London into a European clearinghouse for the yuan was dented by Britain’s vote in 2016 to depart the European Union. Beijing’s 10-year “Made in China 2025 project,” which sought to cut back China’s reliance on overseas know-how and make the nation a international high-tech chief, additionally dampened British exports to China.
China’s rising crackdown on Hong Kong additional strained relations, and spurred then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson to offer citizenship for as much as 3 million residents of Hong Kong, a former colony that Britain handed again to China in 1997.
By 2020, some developments started to enter reverse. Johnson introduced the Huawei ban in July of that 12 months, having initially accepted using its tools. In 2023, China halted funding for one of the nuclear stations it had begun to construct.
In his Bloomberg interview, Starmer conceded that Britain had for years “blown hot and cold” on China. “We had the golden age, which then flipped to an Ice Age. We reject that binary choice.”
Surveying the previous decade of relations, Osborne’s “bet on China” had “categorically” not paid off, mentioned George Magnus, an affiliate on the China Centre on the University of Oxford.
Magnus mentioned the wager had “opened the doors wide to dependency on China” on now-paused nuclear financing, on actual property, on Chinese monetary affect within the City of London, and on “Chinese interference in academic, business and governmental institutions.”
“And all for what? Very little in terms of trade and economic benefit for the UK,” he mentioned. “I’d call this period – for the UK at least – the ‘fool’s golden era.’”
But the rising unpredictability of the US, which has imposed heavy tariffs on its allies, has prompted Starmer and different Western leaders to look once more to China. French President Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing in December, whereas Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited earlier this month. After Starmer’s go to this week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is anticipated to go to in February.
The British public can also be beginning to mellow on China. A poll by YouGov this month discovered that 27% of Britons view China as a “friend and ally,” or a “friendly rival” – up from 19% in October.
Meanwhile, belief within the US is cratering. YouGov discovered that about as many Britons (23%) see the US as a main risk to Britain as they do China (25%), following Trump’s latest threats towards Greenland.
While a tentative tilt towards China is comprehensible, Parton, the previous diplomat, referred to as for clearer serious about the supposed financial advantages of nearer ties with Beijing. Although lawmakers typically tout that China is Britain’s “third biggest trading partner,” Parton mentioned this issues little for the financial development Britain craves. The focus ought to as a substitute be on British exports to China, he mentioned, which have lengthy been in decline.
China recorded the world’s largest ever trade surplus in 2025 – greater than $1.2 trillion – which has deepened fears amongst international locations that a flood of Chinese items may additional hole out their home industries.
Parton mentioned Britain mustn’t go cap-in-hand to China and that Starmer ought to refuse to be pushed round. He famous that British exports to China elevated in 2012 regardless of Beijing’s outrage over the exiled Tibetan Buddhist non secular chief Dalai Lama’s go to to Britain that 12 months, and exports fell in the course of the supposed “golden era.” “Doesn’t that make a point that, actually, politics aren’t really that important to trade?” he requested.
Magnus, of the University of Oxford, additionally cautioned that whereas Beijing could also be a extra predictable companion than the US at current, that doesn’t imply it’s a extra dependable one.
“How can (the Chinese Communist Party) be reliable, except to pursue its own interests?” he mentioned. “This doesn’t mean don’t trade, but it does mean don’t be naive.”