Ignore the cynical jingoism of the China hawks
A deeply ambiguous spying case and an oversized embassy are not a casus belli
Great concern has been raised this past week regarding the collapse of the prosecution of two British men accused of spying on behalf of China. The usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to deploy this story both as yet another attack on Keir Starmer’s government and as a casus belli against China, much to the delight of Dominic Cummings and his allies in the security services who have long pushed for a sharpening of relations with the world’s second power. In the face of these flippant calls for substantial changes to our foreign policy towards a major military and economic power, it’s worth examining this story a little more closely, and seeing whether all is as it seems.
Christopher Cash, one of the two men accused of spying, was previously the Director of the China Research Group (CRG), an anti-China grouping in Parliament. This gave him access to senior MPs (but importantly, no access to classified information), most notably Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns, who served successively as Chairs of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Cash had previously worked as an English teacher in Hangzhou (a city two hours south of Shanghai), where he met a fellow Englishman and English teacher, Christopher Berry, the other man accused of spying. Cash and Berry, according to The Guardian, ‘discussed politics constantly’, and were still in contact when Cash returned to Britain and started working for the CRG. In the meantime, Berry had started working as a consultant for a man in Zhejiang known as ‘Alex’. ‘Alex’ supposedly worked for a (state-linked) Chinese company, and Berry was asked to prepare reports about British attitudes and policy towards China in order to help inform the company’s commercial decisions. This information (often with Cash as his source), rather than being used for commercial decisions, was then actually passed on to senior Chinese officials, who may have used it to help make foreign policy decisions.
The British security services somehow discovered this exchange of information between Cash and Berry and began gathering evidence against them both. Berry and Cash were eventually prosecuted under anti-espionage laws; both pleaded not guilty, and have always strenuously denied the charges against them. Nonetheless, it seemed like a slam-dunk prosecution, and an excellent opportunity for our rigidly anti-China security services to prove to the world how severe a threat China poses to the United Kingdom (rather than just the United States and certain political and ethnic minorities within their borders). But then, at the final hurdle, the case collapsed.
The first instinct of most was to point fingers at the Labour Government, given the Treasury’s highly visible promotion of the UK-China relationship in the pursuit of economic growth under Rachel Reeves. At first, it was claimed that the Government had refused to provide evidence that would have labelled China as an ‘enemy’, collapsing the prosecution’s case against the two men. This seems to have been misleading: the case law suggests that it is not actually necessary to label China as an ‘enemy’ to secure a prosecution; rather, it is merely required to show the country is a ‘current threat to the national security of the UK’. There has been some further debate as to whether the recent case law makes obtaining a prosecution more or less difficult, and The Times and the FT have mostly stuck to the view that this was the reason for the failure of the case, reporting that the Government refused to provide evidence using this specific language. Yet, prima facie, it seems surprising that the evidence provided in the witness statements about the challenges in Britain’s relationship with China wouldn’t already meet this threshold, even without using these words specifically. It is fair to say that many questions remain for prosecutors, who the Government blames for the collapse of the case, and not just the Labour Government. Did they take an excessively cautious approach to legal risk?
But regardless of whether it was necessary or not to secure a conviction, the Government would be quite right to not label China as an ‘enemy’, as this contradicts the policy of both the previous Conservative Government and the current Labour Government. It is also factually untrue: China, it should be remembered, has no territorial conflicts with Britain, interferes less than the United States or India in our internal politics, and is one of Britain’s most important economic partners.
It does appear that the Government may have asked the National Security Advisor to include wording directly lifted from the Labour Manifesto on Britain’s relationship with China in his third witness statement, which raises the question of political interference collapsing the case. This statement was issued under Labour in addition to the main (first) statement, which was issued under the Conservatives. Yet for all the outrage, the wording that was used — referring to a desire for a ‘positive relationship’ with China, especially economically, and, from the Labour Manifesto, to ‘cooperate where we can; compete where we need to; and challenge where we must’ — is basically uncontroversial, and broadly reflects British policy since 2010 (except for the forty-nine days that Liz Truss was Prime Minister). If people are angry at the Labour Government, then they should also be angry at four of the last five Conservative Prime Ministers. And even if the Government did intervene to change the language used about China, so what? Testifying in more belligerent terms would not only be unhelpful to British interests in the relationship with China; it would be inaccurate and mislead both the judge and the public. Prosecutors should not depict our relationship with a foreign state inaccurately. If the terms the government did use to describe China really are enough on their own to collapse a prosecution for espionage, then the law should be changed - friendly powers can spy as much as hostile ones, and it should be possible to prosecute those who collaborate with any foreign government against the British state.
After the collapse of the case, Conservative MPs and various figures from the CPS and security services went into a frenzy, accusing the Government of nothing short of treason. Alicia Kearns speculated that the Chinese may have looked at her naked in her hotel room in Taiwan. The professional anti-China activist Luke de Pulford, in an incoherent, expletive-laden rant for The Times, informed the world that he never got on with Christopher Cash, because Cash publicly and privately took a more dovish stance than he did, and briefed against De Pulford accordingly. Cash, apparently, was a ‘bien pensant’ who served to ‘divide’ the China hawks. So does disagreeing with De Pulford constitute a criminal offence? It isn’t entirely clear, but maybe; after all, it’s what the Chinese want you to do.
Given all this smoke, many readers may be surprised to find that the fire in question is very puny indeed. While we cannot rule out political interference (both Starmer and Powell strenuously deny this), it remains highly plausible that the prosecution was dropped not because of political interference, but because of worries about the risk of losing at trial, and the embarrassing reputational and legal consequences of this. More specifically, it is plausible that the CPS were worried that a judge would rule against the Government on the basis that the information exchanged was not sufficiently sensitive to actually warrant convicting someone under anti-espionage laws.
This view was given further credence when last week, facing questions about the Government’s role in the collapse of the case, Keir Starmer chose to release all three of the witness statements of one of Britain’s Deputy National Security Advisors, Matthew Collins. In the first witness statement, we can now see all the highly nefarious activities that are being alleged of Cash and Berry:
Cash told Berry that Tugendhat would ‘almost certainly obtain a Cabinet position’ in the event that Rishi Sunak won the July-September 2024 leadership election. Cash asked Berry not to pass this information on to his alleged handler (which Berry ignored). In reality, Liz Truss won the leadership election. She appointed Tugendhat to the position of Minister of State for Security, which is a non-Cabinet ministerial position (although Tugendhat did also ultimately attend Cabinet anyway). When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister in October of the same year, Tugendhat remained in the same position. This is mere Parliamentary gossip, is not classified and was, to top it all off, incorrect.
Cash told Berry that Jeremy Hunt was ‘likely to pull out of the Conservative leadership race and back Tom Tugendhat MP’. Again, Cash asked that Berry not pass on this information, though Berry also ignored this. And again, this information is not only mere Parliamentary gossip, but was also incorrect: Hunt did not pull out of the leadership race; when he was eliminated after the first ballot, he endorsed Rishi Sunak instead. Tugendhat would ultimately be eliminated after the third ballot, and endorsed Liz Truss.
Berry told ‘Alex’ that there ‘was very little interest or political incentive in pursuing a government led investigation into Huawei’s role in fixing Russian internet services’. The source of this opinion was Cash. There is no suggestion that any classified information was accessed in order to help Berry or Cash form this opinion. This is punditry, not spying.
Berry told ‘Alex’ that James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, ‘did not consider sanctions to be an effective tool in respect of the import of products from Xinjiang and similar matters’. Again, there is no suggestion that any classified information was accessed in helping Berry or Cash form this opinion; this is punditry, not spying.
Cash told Berry that ‘despite public statement to the contrary, HMG was not planning to take measures [against products from Xinjiang] which could harm the prospect of doing business with China’. There is no suggestion that any classified information was accessed in order to help Berry or Cash form this opinion. Again, this is punditry, not spying, and moreover, although it is technically true that this contradicted the Government’s public statements, any competent analyst of the Sunak Government could easily have come to this conclusion with no insider information whatsoever.
Cash provided Berry with ‘non-public details of a HMG review of the Newport Wafer Fab purchase’. It is not clear what is meant by ‘non-public details’, although it is clear from elsewhere in the witness statement that this information was not classified. Regardless, this is probably the closest thing to ‘spying’ provided in the witness statement.
Berry told ‘Alex’, based on information from Cash, that the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a pro-Taiwan and anti-China international organisation with a heavy presence in the United Kingdom, was briefing Liz Truss, and that the CRG was briefing Rishi Sunak. This is mere Parliamentary gossip, and should also not have come as any surprise that, given the battle between the two candidates over who could signal themselves to be the most anti-China (something that Sunak soon discarded upon becoming Prime Minister), two anti-China organisations were briefing the two candidates.
Berry, using information from Cash, told ‘Alex’ that ‘HMG was against any strong or fast moves against [Confucius Institutes], and that attempts were being made… to try to persuade Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns to withdraw an amendment which would have targeted them’. This is mere punditry. Most good analysts would have made this call with no insider information, as they would have also observed that the Government didn’t want China to take the obvious move of retaliating against the British Council.
Berry told ‘Alex’ that a ‘secret’ meeting had taken place between Taiwanese officials from the Ministry of National Defence and Tugendhat and Kearns, who were at this time backbench MPs (albeit highly prominent ones). While this sounds like it might be sensitive, it is exceptionally unlikely that anything genuinely sensitive (or new) would have been discussed at this meeting, given that neither Tugendhat nor Kearns were in Government. It is certainly not analogous to a meeting between the two Defence Ministers. It is telling that even the witness statement puts the word ‘secret’ in quotation marks.
Berry wrote reports on the perception of Taiwan within Parliament in 2022. Berry referenced the opinion of a number of MPs of Taiwan in this report. This is, first of all, nothing more than Parliamentary gossip. But the witness statement goes on to inform us that some of the individuals mentioned ‘had previously been sanctioned by China in March 2021’, meaning that the opinion of many of these individuals on Taiwan was most likely no secret, either to China or the general public.
It should be clear that from the above list, only (6) seems to fall under the category of ‘spying’ or ‘espionage’ as conventionally defined (and even this is ambiguous, referring to ‘non-public’ rather than ‘secret’ or ‘classified’ information). Berry was, in effect, acting as a consultant with some access to Parliamentary gossip in helping him form his opinions, not acting as a spy.
This is reflected in the fact that Berry does not seem to have been paid much for his work: it has recently been reported that he was discovered by counter-terrorism police with £4,000 in cash when coming back to the United Kingdom. This, for the naïve British media, was somehow seen as evidence of espionage, when it suggests the opposite: £4,000 isn’t a lot of money, and is the sort of amount that you’d expect for a consultant, rather than a spy; Rolexes and diamond rings this is not. We can conclude that vast sums were not required to bribe Berry to ‘betray his country’ because he did not think he was doing anything particularly dangerous or treacherous, and therefore did not need to be compensated accordingly. Lord McDonald, the former head of the Diplomatic Service, agrees with this assessment, commenting that much of the activity ‘is the bread and butter of what embassies and consultancies do around the world’, not ‘espionage’ in any real sense; if this is illicit, then so is the activity of most embassies. It is normal that foreign states with an interest in Britain will want to find out about attitudes and policy towards them.
For his part, Cash does not seem to have received any payment at all from Berry (Berry did offer to pay Cash for information on at least one occasion, but there was no suggestion that any money was sent). Given that Cash had no obvious ideological incentive for helping Berry, aside from perhaps not sympathising with the aims of the most fanatical and delusional China hawks, it seems likely that he didn’t think that passing on the information he had to a friend was particularly risky. His incentive was probably purely a love of gossiping and friendship. As such, he did not feel the need to demand any compensation.
Even the witness statement admits that ‘none of [the information provided] was protectively marked’. An expert witness for the defence asserted that ‘99%’ of the information provided was publicly available. This appears to be something of a gaping hole in the entire case against Cash and Berry although, legally speaking, it is true that under Britain’s exceptionally broad anti-espionage laws, the transmission of classified information is not necessarily required to secure a conviction. But would a judge have actually interpreted law in this way?
The National Security Act 2023, which replaced the Official Secrets Act 1911 under which the two men were prosecuted, includes the following provisions:
A person commits an offence if the person:
(a) Engages in conduct that is likely to materially asst a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities, and
(b) Knows, or having regard to other maters known to them ought reasonably to know, that their conduct is likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service in carrying out UK-related activities
Conduct that may be likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service includes providing, or providing access to, information, goods, services or financial benefits (whether directly or indirectly).
UK-related activities means:
(a) Activities taking place in the United Kingdom;
(b) Activities taking place outside the United Kingdom which are prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom
The extraordinary result of these provisions is that you don’t have to intend to help a foreign intelligence service to commit a crime. You don’t have to hand over any classified information to commit a crime. You merely need to ‘assist’ them in some undefined way and have some vague idea of what the result of your actions might be. A lot of lobby reporting in Westminster could easily qualify as espionage under these provisions, given that someone in Beijing or Moscow could read it.
The practical effect of the laws is that there is an anarcho-tyranny in which virtually all international affairs coverage and virtually all private discussion with foreigners (especially from certain countries) about foreign affairs is potentially criminal, regardless of one’s intentions and regardless of whether any classified information is revealed, but prosecutions are only pursued by the security services when they feel like it. Given the moral panic over ‘disinformation’, there has been absolutely no pushback against these laws from either Labour or the Conservatives.
It is more than plausible that a judge might decide to somehow find a way to interpret the law rather differently from what appears to be the plain words to avoid absurd and tyrannical implications. It would not be the first time that the great task of making sense of a very poorly-drafted law fell to a judge; nor would it be the first time that this task did not result in what the Government hoped for. It is perhaps this risk, more than anything else, that worried prosecutors: not only would a failure to secure a prosecution be embarrassing, it would also make future prosecutions more difficult by providing a troublesome precedent for genuine wrongdoers.
Despite how puny the actual allegations against Berry and Cash are, the Conservative Party have inevitably worked themselves to a frenzy in response to the case’s collapse. It is unfortunate that some of the Conservative Party’s best MPs, most notably Neil O’Brien and Nick Timothy, are fanatically anti-China: it would be better to channel this patriotism towards more productive avenues.
Aside from the fact that many of these MPs have always been anti-China, it seems clear why the Conservative Party are so keen on pursuing this line of attack: they think that national security, alongside fiscal policy, is one of the only issues on which they can gain from both Labour and Reform. To them, drawing attention to the case presents an opportunity for a Tory revival. This is naïve: while it is true that there is an ambient anti-China atmosphere among the British public, the salience of this topic is low. It is very different from the public’s attitude towards Russia. The cost of this approach is that the Conservative Party may find their position on China unhelpfully constrained in the future.
But leading the charge, at least on X, has been Luke de Pulford, the co-founder and executive director of IPAC. We can at least credit Tugendhat and his allies as genuinely seeking to pursue what they perceive as the national interest on China, even if we think they are misguided (and are often interpreting American interests as being equivalent to British interests). De Pulford, by contrast, is a human rights activist by background, first emerging as an anti-slavery activist in 2015, before pivoting to activism on behalf of pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. A geopolitical analyst in the ruthless pursuit of the British national interest he is not.
This is completely the wrong approach to China. Whatever your thoughts on China, Britain has no ability whatsoever to influence anything in Hong Kong or Xinjiang: in Hong Kong, we lost; in Xinjiang, we have no power. ‘Taking a stand’ is little more than moral masturbation. Closing off a potentially productive relationship with China for the short-term political gain from jingoism and moralism while in opposition is foolish.
It is very easy indeed for the Conservative Party and others to take a fanatically anti-China stance — founded principally on the desire to impress not the British public but activists for Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Uighurs, and above all, the United States — when in opposition. It is much harder to do so when taking these moralistic stances in Government have real-world consequences, especially fiscal consequences (and, of course, the tax implications of this). It is telling that Rishi Sunak did not follow through with his anti-China stance, which he was very loud about in the leadership campaign, after he became Prime Minister. Even as the Chinese economy slows, China is our fifth biggest export partner, and a major investor (though we cannot easily say to what extent as most of this investment is through intermediaries in tax havens). The British economy, at this juncture, needs this to continue.
It is a good thing that, thus far, Reform have mostly avoided this trap, giving them more flexibility should they win in 2029. As we wrote back in January 2024 on the topic of China, ‘British foreign policy has been at its most successful when driven by realism and self-interest. Our worst foreign policy disasters, by contrast, occurred when policy was instead driven by humanitarian impulses.’ More politicians should recognise that the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq were the result of hurtling into pointless, moralistic conflicts at the behest of our friends in America, and consider whether we are at risk of doing the same with China.
Aside from the Conservative Party, various anti-China humanitarian activist groups, and Atlanticist think tanks, the other main supporter of Britain provoking some kind of grand confrontation with China is the security services. The Treasury, given the potential economic benefits from Chinese investment, take a softly pro-China stance. In this, they have usually backed by senior politicians in recent years. The Foreign Office’s stance on China is more complex, but certainly not one of dogmatic opposition. The security services, by contrast, are far more closely tied up with the United States than any other branch of the British state, as exemplified by the unprecedented security cooperation of Five Eyes.
In response to the case’s collapse, the security services have released to the public a litany of real or alleged offences by China or Chinese-affiliated actors. We are in no position to confirm or deny any of these allegations. But if China is such a threat it seems remarkable that, given the supposed extent of Chinese activities, the only case that we have actually seen was as minor as that involving Cash and Berry. The result is that the security services give the strong impression of being either incompetent or mendacious. If they want to persuade the public of the threat China poses, then they should prosecute a real case, not just brief in the background. Are the security services seeking to override the views of both senior politicians and powerful departments by covert means? Labour MPs should start asking questions.
The fact is that all states spy: friends spy on friends, neutrals spy on neutrals, enemies spy on enemies, and any other combination thereof spies too. There is no question that, under our current anti-espionage laws, the Americans and Europeans are spying extensively on Britain, much as the Chinese are. China may pose more of a threat than most other countries because of the sophistication and extent of their spying, but this is not an argument for ruining our relations with them, as many seem to claim. It does not represent some kind of casus belli any more than an oversized embassy does.
The existence of spying merely proves the need to make Britain less of a soft target. Prosecuting Cash and Berry’s very minor offences under draconian anti-espionage laws, potentially by misleading the judge about our relationship with China, will not achieve this when far more serious breaches are — if the security services to be believed — regularly occurring with no real response. Nor will totally altering our geopolitical orientation, principally for moralistic reasons, do anything at all to counter this. The only way to prevent genuine spying and security breaches is to reform the British state; in fact, it is not really a question of foreign policy at all, but of basic state competence.
Our relationship with China will never be easy. China and Britain are very different countries, with very different value systems. China is a direct rival in the Pacific to Britain’s main ally, the United States, and this will inevitably cause tensions. But there is also no question that China represents an economic opportunity for Britain. Equally importantly, China also represents an opportunity to begin to hedge our geopolitical position, rather than betting absolutely everything on our continued alignment with an arrogant (and increasingly anti-European) United States. This doesn’t mean that we should expect too much from them either, economically or otherwise. Our relationship with China is hardly going to restore the British economy to good health. All this means is that a sensible Government should, as we argued last year, operate on the basis of friendship and commerce with all nations, wherever possible. This includes China.
The British Right must not short-sightedly and cynically attempt to weaponise jingoism or — worse still — moralism for immediate political gain, undermining the national interest in the process by constraining our future foreign policy orientation. The Tories are probably beyond saving in this regard, as they seem to have chosen hawkishness on China and Russia as one of the key aspects of their attempt to maintain a unique voice. We can only hope that Reform will avoid this obvious trap.
This article was written by Nigel Forrester, our editor-in-chief. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.
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Much needed perspective
The British ruling elites still seem
to think that its 1979, and Britain is an important world power.
It isn't. Churchills Britain is forever gone.
What replaced it, is medium sized country on the periphery of Europe, with deep financial, industrial and demographic problems, with luxuries such as carriers and nuclear missiles it can't really afford.
If Britain is to have a future instead if a steep decline, it needs good relations and trade with all nations. including Russia and China.