Should Britain trust China?

0:01Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Coming up, friend or foe? As Sir Keir Starmer heads to China for the first prime ministerial visit in eight years, we ask what Britain wants and what Beijing expects.

0:23Thank you very much, Mr President, for your welcome. And I delight it to be in China again, but particularly... It's been eight years since a British prime minister headed to China. Since Theresa May's trip back in 2018, we've had another four PMs, a pandemic, a security rethink, and the collapse of our so-called golden era with the world's second superpower. Now, it's a Keir Starmer's turn to rack up the air miles. Downing Street says this trip is about pragmatism. China is the world's second largest economy, but there are significant national security concerns. We know they're spying on us. We spy on them, they spy on us.

1:01I think they're better at it than we are, but that's not for want of trying on our part. So is China friend, foe or perhaps somewhere in between? Richard Spencer is the Times China correspondent based in Beijing. Richard, great to have you with us on the Sky News Daily. Look, what do we know about this trip? Who's going and what really is the purpose behind it? Purpose, good question. We can come to that, I guess. Who's going? An absolutely enormous cost. Sir Keir Starmer obviously is going, the Prime Minister. This is the long promised trip, the first trip by British Prime Minister China for eight years.

1:32He's also bringing 50 businessmen and women. And there's also a travelling press pack. So it's a pretty heavyweight tour that we've got lined up. They'll arrive tomorrow afternoon. They've got to take the long way round because they can't fly over Russia. They can't get hit quite as quickly as anybody travelling on air China can. I think the real purpose is all about Sir Keir Starmer and what his original vision for himself was as a prime minister. That sounds kind of a pompous and waffly way of putting it. But if you had a wish list of what you're going to get out of a visit to China, unless there's a big surprise in store, it's not a very long list.

2:09I think he decided the Tory government that he replaced was slightly chaotic, and he wanted to be more conventional in some of the key areas like foreign policy. So under the Conservatives, you had gone from this wild swing where China was the great new force in the world under Cameron and George Osborne. They declared there was going to be this golden era of relations between China and Britain. And then we had this massive swing under Liz Truss, who was a very different kettle of fish, didn't like China, had, you know, got into a semi-public row with a British ambassador to China, accusing her of being too favorable to China when she was trade secretary originally.

2:49Then she became foreign secretary. Then she became prime minister, didn't go to China. No one's been to China for ages. And Keir Starmer said, well, that's a bit crazy. We need a proper relationship with a major power. And that means having relations, even if we don't like them very much, perhaps we will go on visits. We'll just look a bit more normal. I think that's the reason we're here, rather than because he thinks there's going to be any great deal announced. It does feel like there is a big almighty red reset button about to be hit. But of course, Sir Keir Starmer travels there knowing that this is a big old event for him.

3:22I'm just wondering how it's being perceived at your end. I mean, is there a similar level of excitement? Excitement is probably the wrong word. The Chinese political establishment doesn't really bounce up and down very often. I think they're quite pleased, though. I mean, they don't like having countries, particularly countries that have status, turning around saying, we don't like you. And Britain is, in their eyes, not a major power anymore. It likes to rather sniff about us because we were, in their view, the empire that humiliated them in the 19th century. So they take great glee out of us not being a great power anymore.

3:56But as they repeatedly remind everyone, we still have a permanent seat on the Security Council like China, one of five countries to do so. So that makes us important. So when we're going around stirring up, as they call it, stirring up anti-China sentiment, you know, exaggerating the China threat, as they put it, which if you read the coverage of China in the last couple of years in the British press, it's been quite hostile to China. They don't like that. They don't quite understand that in the meantime, in the last 18 months since Keir Starmer came to power, attitudes towards him have changed a lot in Britain and attitudes to China, if anything got worse.

4:32It's a rather delicate situation for both Starmer and the Chinese, I think. Yeah, still, but the first visit by a British prime minister since 2018 gives an incredibly strong signal about the sort of relationship we want with China. I'm just wondering, is there going to be a meeting of minds? Are the prime minister and the president actually going to be in the same room as each other, do we think? They are kind of rolling out the red carpet. They want to make sure it is, shall I say, visually worthwhile, you know, that Starmer gets the pictures he wants. He has lunch with Xi Jinping. He separately sees the prime minister, and he separately sees the number three in the Chinese sort of pecking order, who's like the head of their parliament, rubber stamp parliament, the National People's Congress.

5:12We always call it the rubber stamp parliament because it doesn't have a huge amount of power, but still he's the boss of parliament, is the number three character in China. And then he gets to see the head of the Bank of China as well on Friday morning. So he's got quite a big roster and he's seeing them separately. This trip, of course, follows very quickly after the long delayed decision on what's become known as the Chinese mega embassy here in London. Do we see a link between the two? I think so, yeah. I think they put a lot of store by this embassy decision. I don't know if you want to go into the long history of this controversy, which goes back, you know, right to the time of Theresa May, in fact, when the embassy building was first sold to the Chinese to be turned into an embassy.

5:49I think it would have been quite humiliating for China not to be granted this embassy, given all the press and publicity and controversy and, you know, the fact they'd spent a couple of hundred million quid on it already. I think that was necessary for this visit to go ahead. It's been a long process to get to this visit and the Chinese are now finally sort of, you know, making it a big thing. We know, though, that the security services raised concerns about the embassy in London and indeed concerns about Chinese activity in that area are a big risk factor in this relationship. Look, electric vehicles, Chinese electric vehicles are bound to be discussed in some of the meetings that take place on this trip.

6:28in this country, if you work for the Ministry of Defence or you work for the security services, you've been told not to have classified confidential conversations in the back of a Chinese motor. I'm not surprised. You know, Chinese tech is now everywhere. And as journalists, we're told to check out phones for malware. Now, when it comes to electric vehicles, that's quite an interesting question, right, for a whole load of reasons. The rest of the world is absolutely terrified that their car industry is going to be wiped out by a lot of cheap Chinese imports. and are putting up barriers to that.

7:01You know, you've seen already, you know, President Trump, obviously massive tariffs on Chinese imports. But before him, President Biden also put 100 % tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The European Union is putting tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to protect their car industry. Britain so far has said, no, we're very happy. You can flood us with cheap Chinese cars if you want. That's great. Now, that's a very brave free trade posture we're taking. As you say, it's slightly counterintuitive, given that we're also probably one of the most nervous countries about Chinese tech now and about Chinese power over us, including with the chips that they have in Chinese cars.

7:39So that's a broader issue, which I'm watching quite closely, actually. But I suppose, though, it's with this trip as the backdrop. It is the scale of Chinese surveillance that is out there in the public domain that I think is alarming to people at this end of our conversation. I mean, Huawei were going to be building the 5G network here. That was stymied after concerns from the security services. And only today we are learning via the Telegraph that there was Chinese surveillance of mobile phones taking place in Downing Street. When it gets that close to the centre of power, should we really be seen getting on a plane and going over for a friendly visit?

8:11What would you expect China to do? I mean, China are not a friendly power. We know very well from that court case that was abandoned that we don't define them as an enemy, but we don't define them as a friend either. You know, if we're so stupid as to allow our prime minister's aides to get their phones bugged, I mean, really, I mean, that's the question there, isn't it? I'm sure we'd bug the Chinese Politburo's phones if we could to find out what they're up to. Let's be careful about this. We know they're spying on us. We spy on them, they spy on us. I think they're better at it than we are, but that's not for want of trying on our part.

8:43Where we need to be careful is influence operations for which you don't need an embassy. They have front organisations and surveillance networks through, for example, universities, through student societies where Chinese dissidents, Chinese students, Chinese people living in Britain and indeed people who engage with China from the British side are watched and attempts are made to influence them, influence what people are taught about China in universities and influence what people tell politicians and politicians themselves think. That's a very extensive network. That's something that I would expect Sir Keir Starmer to raise with the authorities in China when he comes.

9:21That's one issue. And the other issue is the bullying and harassment of dissidents, particularly the moment Hong Kong dissidents in Britain. That's another area where I would expect Starmer to speak. China also has a number of economic levers at its disposal as well in terms of exerting influence. We've already talked about electric vehicles, but more generally the production large scale of batteries. The United Kingdom investing very heavily in green tech at the moment as well. China, major, major manufacturer of it. I mean, have we seen China start to leverage its economic power over the United Kingdom as yet?

9:55They're not leveraging it against us because we're being nice to them. Now, the question is whether we should be so nice to them, whether we should follow the EU in putting some limits on Chinese exports. And that's something where when you look at the nitty gritty of whatever is announced, what are we getting in exchange for all these Chinese imports that have created in Britain as in America, this huge trade deficit? Now, Now, we're very pleased to be getting their cheap green tech, you know, or solar panels. China now makes 90%, I think it is, of the world's solar panels. As you say, we're probably buying Chinese batteries because they are starting to dominate the electric vehicle battery market.

10:29Now, a lot of people will be saying, do we really want to be so dependent on China for these things? I mean, what if there is a massive trade war or even, heaven forbid, an armed conflict with China? Surely we'd be better off buying our electric cars from Germany or making them ourselves. That's the conversation that everyone else in the world is having now. America is having that and the EU is having that. You know, I don't hear that in Britain at the moment. Donald Trump's clearly been shaking up the old world order. Things are not the same as they used to be. So how is he going to react to Keir Starmer cozying up to China?

11:01Donald Trump cannot complain about Keir Starmer going to China. He is going to China. That's what he said last week. He met Xi in October last year in South Korea, shaking hands, big chums. He's said nice things about Xi Jinping that we'd never get away with in this country. No politician in Britain could get away with calling, you know, Xi one of his closest friends and what a great guy he is and how they get on really well and poo-pooing human rights concerns. If you were a Chinese leader 10 years ago, reading the Trump national security strategy that came out last year, you could have been throwing the dollars in the house.

11:38Fantastic. Sort of, we don't care about NATO, America first, very little about China, very little about the threat from Taiwan. That's the messaging coming out of America. So, you know, it all depends what Starmer says when he gets to Beijing. But I don't see Starmer in any way trying to build up China as an alternative to America. That just isn't how Starmer has operated on the foreign policy front. But Richard, with your experience of the relationship between the UK and China, Just overall, this is a trip that clearly comes with some risk. But for the prime minister, this is the correct decision at this time, given the rest of the world.

12:14I don't think it was really sustainable for Britain to say we're not going to deal with China. There's no particular fixed reason for us to say we're not going to have a diplomatic exchange with, as I say, a fellow permanent member of the Security Council. As I say, the danger for Starmer is not really in going to China, but in coming back from China with nothing. I don't think people would criticise him for that or for having a pragmatic policy towards China. But what are they giving you other than just the optics of a handshake at the Great Hall of the People with President Xi? Are you going to come back with something practical?

12:53And if you want to find out more about the Prime Minister's forthcoming trip to China, Just head over to skynews.com. The Daily's back tomorrow.