Opinion | How Chinese Spy Scandals are orchestrated political theatre in Britain

By Tom Fowdy

For the past week or so, a "Chinese spy scandal" has dominated the headlines in Britain. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, is accused of having close ties to a so-called agent affiliated with China's "United Front Work Department" which is depicted as an influence operation to get close to elite individuals in the country. This is a hangover from his days as a British trade envoy. Not surprisingly, the story has produced a title wave of hysteria and paranoia that raves on about so-called "Chinese influence" inside of the British Parliament and state, coinciding with frankly ridiculous news articles such as "Chinese-made air fryers are spying on you."

These developments come amid the British government's attempts to improve relations with China following their predecessor's deliberate derailing. Of course, that is all part of the design. The stories constitute deliberate and cynical political theatre and are used by bad actors wanting to block improvements in ties with Beijing and undermine Keir Starmer. The political timing of this, of course, is beyond a coincidence.

First of all, Donald Trump is returning to office. Presidential transition politics appears to have a ripple effect on the United Kingdom as the government in Westminster seeks to prepare to align its political stance whatever path the USA will take, usually with the goal of appeasing them on matters such as trade and security. This is especially visible when the two parties in power clash, hence a Labour government faces a right-wing Republican administration.

As a case study of this, in late 2020 and early 2021, the UK aligned itself with the Xinjiang forced labor narrative in order to supplement the incoming Biden administration's wishes, and the foreign office led BBC World Service thus aggressively started pushing such "exposes." Part of this combined diplomatic effort was also to undermine EU engagement with China, which was successful. However, it is not clear as to whether the UK government is deliberately orchestrating this spy scandal to appease Trump, or that some political actors within the security services are in fact doing so themselves.

Either way, there is a clear goal by some to block the improvement of relations. When Keir Starmer met Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, he told Xi in very diplomatic terms that the government would "call in" the planning application for a new "mega embassy" in Tower Hamlets and thus overrule the local planning authority, with the council repeatedly blocking it. This Embassy is seen as a huge problem by the United States, naturally, and thus the "spy" card is the easiest one to play to make it politically embarrassing to undermine it. The Conservative Party of course and those who were previously in government, have a stake in doing so as well.

Hence, when such scandals emerge, we see certain "anti-China" actors quickly crawl out of the woodwork, dominate media coverage, and thus attempt to force their hawkish views onto the agenda. What usually happens is that Iain Duncan Smith, who has now positioned himself as the number one anti-China voice in the UK, will call an "urgent question" in the House of Commons and grandstand his views, while also being given every media opportunity. Smith is part of the Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). IPAC is funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). A year or so ago, UK IPAC representatives were key players behind a previous Chinese "spy" scandal (trial ongoing) which was used to dismantle the "China research group" in the Conservative Party, seen as a rival anti-China faction.

All these factors make it difficult to determine precisely "who" is behind the Prince Andrew revelations, but for such knowledge to be known, it would have to be security services related. After all, this information as already known as the previous government "banned" him from entering the country, as part of its much more hardline anti-China agenda (Hence Braverman is penning foaming op-eds in the Telegraph). Therefore, we see nonetheless that this information has been "held" and then released at a politically convenient moment to cause maximum embarrassment for the government. Similar to the European Union in the 1990s and 2000s, what you essentially see is a British state civil war over relations with China which seeks to make it impossible and politically costly to engage.

The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more.He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.8.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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