By Sascha O'Sullivan
In April 2020, senior Conservative MPs launched a policy group, the China Research Group, to cast a sceptical eye over Sino-British relations.
The group was styled on the influential and controversial organisation used to debate Brexit – the European Research Group.
Now, the group of foreign policy hawks is at the heart of a scandal after it employed a man now accused of being a Chinese spy.
Since he first went for the Tory leadership in summer last year, Rishi Sunak was accused by China hawks of being soft on Beijing.
Tom Tugendhat (now Sunak’s security minister), Iain Duncan Smith and Bob Seely all threw their support behind Liz Truss for her fierce attitude towards the Chinese Communist Party.
Sunak’s premiership has certainly marked a change in relations with China, with James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, visiting Beijing last month. Only this morning, Kemi Badenoch, tipped as a potential successor if Sunak falters at the next election, was adamant we should not call China a “foe”. And over the summer, the Foreign Office issued a directive saying we shouldn’t call countries such as China “hostile states”.
The allegations of spying will throw Sunak’s softly-softly approach under the microscope as the government prepares to get into campaign mode.
At the G20 summit in Delhi over the weekend, Sunak met with the Chinese premier Li Qiang after the revelations came out. He said he raised “very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy”.
But the prime minister is facing calls to go further than just strong words in his indictment of China’s actions and uninvited delegates from the AI security summit scheduled for later this month.
No10 has also refused, so far, to call China a “threat”, saying it would be wrong to “reduce” Sino-British relations to “just one word”.
Labour leader Keir Starmer resisted using the word “threat” and instead called China a “strategic challenge”.
