Ian Williams

China’s political interference is in many ways worse than President Trump asserts, but the true nature and scale of Beijing’s activities may be obscured by his efforts to use it for partisan gain. Whatever Trump’s motives in accusing China of meddling in the 2020 presidential election – “the largest compromise of election data in history,” as he put it – Beijing has undoubtedly become more aggressive in its political interference. Beijing has adopted Russian-style disinformation operations in its attempts to undermine its western rivals, and the United States in particular. The pandemic was a turning point.

President Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone during his trip to China. He returned from his Beijing summit with Xi Jinping yesterday full of praise for the “great leader,” who is, in Trump’s estimations, “an incredible guy.” The summit was “very successful, world-renowned, and unforgettable,” according to the President, who insisted that “a lot of different problems were settled.” But there’s one problem that hasn’t been addressed: the growing number of Chinese operations on US soil. China’s espionage and influence operations are extensive Last week Eileen Wang, the mayor of the southern Californian city of Arcadia agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of China.

China’s largest trade show is now under way in the southern city of Guangzhou. The Canton Fair is a colossal month-long affair with around 32,000 exhibitors and is often described as a shop window for Chinese manufacturers – a barometer of the China trade – where just about anything and everything can be bought. This year the mood is subdued. ‘The spectre of the Iran war hung heavy like the banners inside the gigantic exhibition halls,’ as Bloomberg described it. Exhibitors reportedly complained of soaring costs and falling orders, most notably from the Middle East.

The scrappy Cambodian border town of Poipet, long associated with vice and criminality, was shaken shortly before Christmas by the sound of F-16 fighter jets screaming overhead. The Thai Royal Air Force was, astonishingly, bombing a series of casinos. At least five fortified compounds were damaged, which were part of a vast industry that has conned millions of people across the world out of billions of dollars. This was “a war against the scam army,” Thailand’s army said. Scamming is a mainstay of Cambodia’s economy. The country earns an estimated $12 billion annually from online scamming alone, around half the value of its formal economy. Poipet is just one small outpost of a Chinese organized crime network, many elements of which have links to the Chinese Communist party.

Keir Starmer is poised to give the go-ahead for China’s new mega-embassy near the Tower of London – the biggest diplomatic mission in Europe and a ‘nest of spies’ in the eyes of its opponents. But this will not be the end of the story. A legal challenge seems certain to follow, and the decision will be seen by critics as further evidence of Starmer trying to cosy up to Beijing at the expense of national security. In addition, the timing could not be worse, given the turbulence in geopolitics and strained relations with Trump’s America. The decision is expected as early as today, with Starmer claiming Britain’s intelligence agencies have raised no formal objections.

The antics of Keir Starmer and his top security adviser over the collapsed China espionage case bring to mind the slapstick British movie Carry On Spying – which is precisely the message it will have conveyed to Beijing. Instead of Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Williams and their team of fictional incompetents, the real-life Whitehall farce has Jonathan Powell on a single-minded mission to appease China. Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, has been accused of torpedoing the trial to avoid embarrassing China at a time when he is leading efforts to rebuild diplomatic ties with Xi Jinping. One can only imagine the despair in Britain’s security agencies and the Crown Prosecution Service, who would not have brought the charges unless they were reasonably confident of success.

Today’s vast military parade in Beijing is the climax of three days of political theatre orchestrated by President Xi Jinping, with supporting roles played by those pantomime villains Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. The smirking North Korean and Russian dictators joined Xi to witness the People's Liberation Army’s goose-stepping soldiers and shiny weaponry rumbling through Tiananmen Square. ‘Today, humanity is again faced with the choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum,’  Xi told the crowd of some 50,000 carefully selected spectators (which roughly matched the number of soldiers). He said the Chinese people ‘firmly stand on the right side of history’.