As Beijing’s political elites have been holidaying and strategising on their annual seaside retreat to Beidaihe, Chinese robot factories have been churning out humanoids and other robotics faster than you can say ‘I’ll be back.’ At the same time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to keep up with all the new products it aims to ban from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with the capacity to be remotely controlled by their manufacturing country, which includes robots, power inverters, and a plethora of other goods.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Japan published its Defence White Paper, which made the case for its military build-up and described the PRC as a ‘challenge’ to the international world order. Military experts expect policymakers in Tokyo to call for further increases in defence spending, aimed primarily at deterring the PRC from starting a conflict over Taiwan, which could implicate Japan into a long-term war. Beijing had a lot to say about this.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

If you’ve been reading the news, or only skimming the headlines over the past few months, you will have seen just how ubiquitous the People’s Republic of China (PRC) seems to be.

Be it semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence (AI), numerous state visits to Beijing, trade wars with Brussels or Washington, it is clear that the PRC is shaping global trends. However, it can still be difficult to discern what powers this ubiquitous presence on the world stage.

Through my analysis, I hope to show that mostly, Beijing does indeed have a strategy linking its global engagement in these sectors, and often that becomes clearest in the developments which do not get the most attention in the headlines.

In the past week, Wang Yi, Foreign Minister of the PRC, has met with his counterparts from Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran, and Pakistan, respectively. He met with them as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led economic and security organisation positioned as a counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – an equivalence which members of the SCO vehemently disagree with. Beijing, as I wrote in a recent newsletter, sees NATO as a ‘warmonger’, and itself as a peacemaker.

The SCO continues to morph into something beyond a sinocentric security organisation; as I explain below, it is a forum where Beijing – clearly the most powerful member – can soft-launch its foreign policy strategies to a group of friends before hopefully extending them beyond the bloc in the coming years.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

It has barely been a week since my last newsletter but a lot has happened.

Developments in the South China Sea reached explosive new heights last Sunday, when for the first time, Beijing conducted a live fire drill in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – just two weeks after test-firing its first ever dummy warhead from a nuclear submarine into the waters of the Pacific.

On Monday, Andy Burnham officially became the United Kingdom’s (UK) latest Prime Minister, prompting a rather anodyne congratulatory message from Li Qiang, Premier of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), on his appointment. That said, more insightful analysis from Chinese think tankers on what Burnham’s premiership could mean for UK-PRC relations is included in section 4.1 below.

Last Friday, we obtained a clearer idea of what Donald Trump, President of the United States (US), was trying to say during a rambling speech about supposed election interference by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Mark Warner, a US Senator and Vice-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, clarified that while Beijing is a serious strategic competitor to Washington, and does pose threats, regarding foreign interference in the specific elections mentioned by Trump, ‘the facts have not changed’. It is more likely that the President is ‘distorting’ these threats for political purposes.

This topic was apparently left unmentioned during the recent meeting between the American and Chinese foreign ministers during the sidelines of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, which began in Manila on Tuesday.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

This is the 14th Tangram from Observing China, where the leading China experts give a diverse range of succinct responses to key questions on the development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Driven by the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) opaque, sustained militarisation over the last two decades – as well as its growing assertiveness across the Indo-Pacific region – Tokyo’s relationship with Beijing has shifted. In response, Tokyo has embarked on a historic modernisation of the Japanese Self-Defence Force (JSDF), marked by a 9.4% defence budget increase, the deployment of missile launchers, and a rhetorical shift away from conditional pacifism. For the PRC, the suggestion by Sanae Takaichi, Prime Minister of Japan, that a Taiwan conflict could trigger Japanese military involvement poses a significant threat to Chinese ambitions. While both nations maintain deep economic interdependence, mutual suspicions have spiked.

The PRC has sought to denounce these defensive measures as ‘reckless new militarism’. Simultaneously, Beijing has intensified its pressure campaign by imposing dual-use export controls on dozens of Japanese companies, leveraging economic sanctions, and conducting joint bomber exercises near Japanese airspace. While diplomacy continues ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen in November 2026, the PRC’s risk tolerance over potential Japanese involvement in a Taiwan contingency – as well as its willingness to force a confrontation over its claims to the Senkaku Islands – remains uncertain.

Regardless of the immediate fallout, this friction serves as a test for the PRC’s regional military posture and its broader geopolitical vision. As Tokyo solidifies its deterrence capabilities, whether Beijing alters its assertive trajectory or further escalates its security policy warrants investigation.

This forms the basis of this month’s Tangram, where six experts weigh in with their observations to answer the following question: Does Tokyo’s shifting defence posture change Beijing’s strategic calculus?

Prof. Nobukatsu Kanehara

Executive Director, Sasakawa Peace Foundation; Professor, Reitaku University; and International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The Pacific region after the Second World War has been an almost exclusive sphere of influence of the United States (US). The PRC is the first challenger to America, and has an ambition to carve out its own sphere of interest, as well as to annex the free and democratic island of Taiwan.

The US has only five allies in the region; Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia. Japan’s role is important to engage America in the Indo-Pacific region, all the more so as the US now represents only 25% of the world economy and Donald Trump, President of the US, is anti-globalist and increasingly inward looking. Japan should thus bear the larger burden.

The biggest issue for America and its allies in the region is to prevent a Taiwan contingency involving the PRC. Such a conflict would devastate the frontline players like Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. The East and South China seas would be closed for the merchant ships as they would become battlefields. Maritime trade with the PRC would be cut off totally. In the short term, investment in dollars and euros would desert East Asia. A Taiwan contingency would involve the world’s biggest national economies, and would have a huge impact upon the global economy. It must be prevented.

In 2015, Shinzo Abe, then Prime Minister of Japan, changed the constitutional interpretation so that Japan could participate in regional contingencies, i.e., the ones that could involve American forces in Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines. Under the Japan-US Security Treaty signed in 1960, If the US intervenes in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Japan has to let American forces use their bases in its territory. Abe declared that, in addition to this, Japan could also join the fighting in the context of collective self-defence.

The JSDF are almost 250,000 personnel strong, with roughly 300 combat aircraft, 50 destroyers, and more than 20 submarines. This is a substantial amount to help the US. Fumio Kishida, former Prime Minister of Japan, decided to double the defence budget, and Takaichi will accomplish the goal this year. It will be more than JP¥11 trillion (£50 billion), although it seems smaller than expected in dollar terms because of the yen’s drastic depreciation: US$1 is JP¥160 today; it was JP¥110 at the time of Abe.

Athena Tong

Visiting Researcher, Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), University of Tokyo

Japan’s defence transformation is reshaping the regional security landscape, but Beijing has yet to revise its own strategic calculus fundamentally. The 2026 defence budget exceeds the 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) benchmark two years ahead of schedule. Type 12 and Type 25 standoff missiles are beginning to enter service across the Southwest Islands, defence equipment transfer rules have been liberalised, and Takaichi has stated more explicitly than her predecessors that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a survival-threatening situation for Japan. Together, these developments mark the continued normalisation of Tokyo’s conventional deterrent rather than a fundamental departure from its post-war security policy.

Beijing, however, has incorporated these developments into its longstanding narrative of Japanese remilitarisation and strategic encirclement, rather than treating them as a reason for restraint. Its response has remained consistent with that assessment. Psychological, legal, and information pressure has increasingly focused on Takaichi personally. Joint bomber patrols with Russia continue to test Japan’s air defence posture. At the same time, two rounds of export control listings have named around 80 Japanese entities, including four defence research institutions, extending economic coercion into the sectors that underpin the country’s long-term defence industrial base.

This reflects the PRC’s assessment that Japan’s trajectory matters more than its current capabilities. While Tokyo has committed unprecedented resources to defence, many of its most significant capabilities will only become operational over the coming decade. Munitions stockpiles remain limited, missile defence capacity continues to face pressure, and sustainment remains an area requiring further investment. From Beijing’s perspective, this leaves a window in which coercion below the threshold of armed conflict can impose political and economic costs on Japan before its military modernisation reaches full effect.

That window, however, is not indefinite. If Tokyo holds the line at 2% and resists pressure to overreach towards the higher targets now under debate, deepens interoperability with Washington, and closes the gap on sustainment, the deterrent value becomes far harder for Beijing to discount. At that point, the strategic balance underpinning the PRC’s calculations over the First Island Chain begins to shift more fundamentally.

For now, Japan’s changing defence posture has not deterred the PRC from increasing pressure. Instead, it has prompted Beijing to intensify coercive measures designed to slow or raise the domestic costs of Tokyo’s strategic shift. Whether Japan ultimately changes the Chinese calculus will depend less on the scale of today’s budget increases than on its ability to sustain the reforms already underway and to translate political commitments into operational capability.

Dr I-Chung Lai

President, The Prospect Foundation

Since late last year, Beijing has noticeably intensified its diplomatic and rhetorical attack against Tokyo. Initially, the PRC focused its criticism on Japan’s growing willingness to support Taiwan during a specific cross-strait contingency scenario. However, this has recently escalated into more aggressive direct accusations of ‘new militarism’ – a provocative charge that Shinjirō Koizumi, Minister of Defence of Japan, firmly and publicly refuted during his remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

Interestingly, Beijing remained relatively quiet when Tokyo first announced its historic arms buildup and defence policy overhaul in 2022. This sudden, sharper reaction indicates a fundamental shift in the PRC’s strategic assessment of Japan. This recalibration was likely triggered by the country’s rightward political turn and the Takaichi administration’s more explicit, public support for Taiwan. Anticipating a much more hawkish stance in Tokyo’s upcoming defence documents, Beijing has proactively reformulated its strategic posture toward its neighbour.

While Japan’s public alignment with Taiwan will not alter the core determination displayed by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to achieve unification during his tenure, the ‘Takaichi factor’ forces Beijing to recalculate its military options. The PRC can no longer plan solely for possible American military intervention in a Taiwan scenario; it must now seriously factor in a more responsive and substantial Japanese involvement.

Compounding the PRC’s security anxieties is Japan’s fundamental transition from passive, post-war self-defence to a more proactive, potentially pre-emptive posture. This is underscored by Tokyo’s planned deployment of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, capable of striking targets directly within Chinese territory. Furthermore, Japan has expanded its regional security profile by providing critical defence capacity building assistance to the PRC’s maritime neighbours, including the Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This defence initiative has significantly enhanced Japan’s security cooperation with countries surrounding the PRC, causing visible anxiety in Beijing.

Ultimately, Beijing structurally objects to Tokyo assuming a leadership role in East Asia, just as it opposes India’s dominant position in South Asia. The PRC views its competition with both nations as an immutable reality dictated by strategic geography, largely independent of their specific positions on Taiwan. Even if Tokyo and New Delhi remained entirely passive on cross-strait issues, Beijing would still view them as strategic competitors in a region where it believes it should enjoy exclusive hegemony. The PRC’s heightened diplomatic offensive and high-profile criticism this year reflect its deep concern over Japan’s increasingly competitive regional trajectory.

Alyssa Chen

Indo-Pacific-focused Journalist and Independent Researcher

Japan’s deployment of long-range counterstrike missiles and its decision to lift restrictions on lethal arms exports mark a fundamental recalibration of its post-war defence posture. Koizumi has even called for an open debate on nuclear weapons – something once unthinkable given Japan’s post-war pacifism. For the PRC, these developments introduce uncomfortable complications into its strategic calculation regarding Taiwan.

Tokyo’s expanding military capabilities now force Beijing to contemplate a genuinely multi-theatre conflict scenario. Long-range missiles positioned along Japan’s south-western islands can cover the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, and some parts of the Chinese mainland. Perhaps more troubling for Beijing is how the loosening of arms export restrictions enables regional partners, such as the Philippines, to acquire advanced systems.

When these countries operate compatible Japanese-sourced equipment and have trained alongside the JSDF, the PRC must plan not for isolated contingencies but for coordinated responses across multiple potential flashpoints simultaneously. This represents a dramatically more complex operational challenge than previously faced.

These defence developments cannot be easily reversed, and Beijing is aware of this reality. That is why it has stepped up accusations of Japan attempting to revive militarism while reacting fiercely. Yet, the implications extend beyond immediate military calculations. Chinese scholars now largely believe that the deterioration in bilateral ties, coupled with Tokyo’s evolving defence posture, represents not another cyclical downturn but systemic structural decline. The 2014 APEC model – when Xi and Abe’s handshake broke the ice between the two nations – appears unlikely to be replicated in Shenzhen in November.

If Chinese strategists conclude that Japan’s military modernisation and regional security network will only strengthen with time, the logical implication is to act before that transformation becomes mature and interoperability becomes deeply embedded. Rather than deterring Chinese action, Tokyo’s evolving posture may compress Beijing’s perceived window of opportunity.

The uncomfortable reality is that Japan’s shifting defence posture does change the PRC’s strategic calculus, but not necessarily in ways that enhance stability or deterrence. Whether this ultimately accelerates or delays Chinese action remains an open question, which will require time and access to Chinese strategic thinking to answer.

Owen Au

Founder, Strategic China Policy Group

Tokyo’s changing defence posture does not fundamentally alter Beijing’s strategic calculus, but it does make that calculus considerably more complicated.

For much of the post-war period, Asian security rested on a ‘hub-and-spokes’ system of bilateral alliances centred on the US. Although regional institutions and minilateral groupings have since proliferated, American security guarantees remain the foundation of the region’s security architecture. The so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’ under the second Trump administration points towards a different worldview, in which major powers exercise greater control within their respective spheres of influence and US commitments beyond the Western Hemisphere become more selective and transactional.

Having long sought to expand its regional primacy without triggering a direct military confrontation with Washington, Beijing sees uncertainty over American commitments as a strategic opportunity. In this context, Japan’s changing posture complicates Chinese calculations in at least two ways.

Firstly, stronger Japanese capabilities may reinforce the US presence in the region. Trump has repeatedly portrayed American alliances as unequal burdens and criticised the US-Japan security relationship as ‘one-sided’. By increasing defence expenditure and modernising its military, Japan is seeking to establish itself as a more capable – and therefore more valuable – ally. If Tokyo can demonstrate that it is shouldering more of the regional defence burden, Washington may have a stronger incentive to maintain its forward presence despite its increasingly transactional approach. Any Chinese operation involving Taiwan or the East China Sea must therefore account for a more resilient alliance and a wider network of launch sites, sensors, and defensive assets.

Secondly, a Japan more committed to regional security could help build a denser network of partnerships less dependent on shifts in US policy. Its expanding cooperation with Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, and South East Asian partners includes joint exercises, defence equipment transfers, reciprocal access agreements, and maritime capacity building. Although these initiatives remain far short of a formal alliance system independent of the US, they nonetheless point towards a regional order less vulnerable to sudden changes in Washington and better able to raise the political and operational costs of Chinese coercion.

Japan’s defence buildup is unlikely to match the scale or pace of the PRC’s in the near future, but it is making it harder for Beijing to assume that uncertainty over American commitments would automatically translate into Chinese predominance.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

Japan’s rearmament efforts, which have been both physical and cognitive, will have a real impact on Beijing’s strategic calculus. It is important to recognise however, that this rearmament is not unprecedented since the end of the Second World War.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Japan underwent a comprehensive rearmament effort which resulted in a highly capable Self-Defence Force designed to deter and, if necessary, fight the Soviet Union in the Pacific. Tokyo’s more modern ‘security renaissance’ has been a slow burn at first, with post-Cold War peace dividend thinking slowly put to bed owing to the enormous and sustained military buildup and modernisation of the Chinese military.

In the physical realm, Japan has been playing catch-up, made difficult by an ageing population and stagnant economy. Yet, Tokyo is responsible for the world’s tenth largest defence budget, with plans to raise it further in the coming years. Japan also gets serious ‘bang for its buck’ with its budget. It has more than 20 conventional submarines, over 50 major surface combatants, over 300 combat aircraft, and a capable suite of both offensive and defensive missile capabilities.

The JSDF are both growing and modernising, and are well designed to contribute to a potential fight against the PRC in the Western Pacific. Japan’s growing capabilities will weigh heavily on the minds of Chinese military planners. Tangled with American military forces and well versed in training for local contingencies, the JSDF would make a significant contribution if drawn into a conflict.

Almost as important as the growing capabilities has been the mindset shift. Where in previous decades Beijing may have calculated that Tokyo would be more likely to try and avoid intervention in a regional conflict due to internal political debates, this assumption is no longer as certain. This cognitive rearmament has included legal changes which now allow Japan to join conflict in defence of allies and reduced export controls on defence equipment. The activities of the JSDF have also become bolder, including plans for forward deployment of anti-ship missiles on Yonaguni Island (the closest Japanese island to Taiwan), and joining US-Philippines exercises as combatants for the first time as opposed to observers.

Beijing now has to assume that the full weight of an increasingly capable Japan must be factored into any potential plans for military aggression in the Western Pacific, seriously bolstering deterrence against the PRC.

If you would like to explore any of the Council on Geostrategy’s PRC-focused research papers, click here to visit the China Observatory.

The image at the top of this page has been generated using AI.

Subscribe now

Endless names of forums and acronyms can become tiresome, to the point that their significance is lost. But today, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) forum opens in Shanghai – hosted annually by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), previous guests have included Elon Musk.

This year, for the first time since the conference began in 2018, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), appeared in person and gave a keynote speech. He has announced measures which promote the PRC’s use of AI as a force for good – some of which are sure to entice new and emerging partners.

At the same time, others continue to point out areas where Beijing could do more to exert its influence to achieve peace.

Last week, I wrote how during a meeting with Wang Yi, Foreign Minister of the PRC, his counterpart Espen Barth Eide applied pressure for the PRC to use its influence with the Kremlin to convince Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, to enter into negotiations over a peace deal with Ukraine.

Last Friday, Lindsey Graham, United States (US) Senator, echoed the same sentiments during a visit to Kyiv, stating that the PRC has an ‘oversized’ influence over Putin, even going so far as to say that ‘the road to ending this ⁠war, the road to peace, passes through Beijing more than it does (through) Washington, Kyiv, or Moscow.’

Just a couple of weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Beijing and Moscow signed their ‘no limits’ strategic partnership.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

The Thinker | No. 09/2026

This article is the fourth and final part of a mini-series analysing the ‘China Audit’ one year after the publication of His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s National Security Strategy. Part 1 can be read here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

The intended outcomes – or ‘deliverables’ in Whitehall speak – of the ‘China Audit’ were mutually contradictory. How could guidance to business, academia, and others be clear if no audit document was published? David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, declared, ‘Honourable Members will understand that much of the audit was conducted at high classification.’ However, Honourable Members did not understand. As Dame Emily Thornberry, Chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, commented:

We were promised a ‘full and comprehensive audit on the breadth of the UK’s [United Kingdom] relationship with [the People’s Republic of] China [PRC]’. Instead, we were given three paragraphs on page 39 of the National Security Strategy…We haven’t seen the Audit and we don’t know what’s in the strategy – which should apply to government, local government, business, universities, and particularly the technology sector.

Surely, we all need to know this so that we can act together in our approach towards [the PRC]. The Government says the purpose of the Audit was to ensure that we have a consistent attitude towards [the PRC] – how can we do that if we don’t know what it is?

The addition of three – anodyne – paragraphs in the National Security Strategy (NSS) hardly constitute clear guidance. Worse, perhaps, is that the ‘Strategic Framework’ for guiding departments within His Majesty’s (HM) Government, presumably classified as secret, must be off limits to most civil servants – a very small percentage of whom are vetted to that level.

The proof of a strategy fit for purpose lies particularly in reconciling economic and trade policy with environmental and security concerns, in particular, those brought by the advance of science and technology. The silence from Lammy (and the NSS) on the Chinese science and technology threat is extraordinary – just a short mention of a joint commission on science, nothing on how or where the boundaries of cooperation with a hostile power are to be set.

An example of this failure is the contrast between the March 2025 signing by Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, of a Memorandum of Understanding for a Clean Energy Partnership with the PRC’s National Energy Administration in Beijing, which included offshore wind, and the decision not to allow Chinese company Ming Yang to invest in production of offshore wind turbines in Scotland. A thought-through strategy should surely have already decided the parameters for investment in the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).

This same lack of clarity is evident in investment by Chinese Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacturers. Concerns about eventual dependency and control of the British automobile industry, or the ability of the Chinese to switch off trucks, vans and cars (i.e., the UK’s logistics) via the cellular module or to extract data have yet to be addressed. Even less edifying is the muddle at the Ministry of Defence (MOD), which on the one hand bans Chinese vehicles from certain sites, and advises its people not to talk in Chinese cars for fear of eavesdropping nor to plug in their smart phones, which allows data copying; yet at the same time has over 1,700 Chinese vehicles in its transport fleet.

There is scant evidence that HM Government collectively – both across government departments and in consultation with outside expertise – has worked up a plan to establish a set of trade and investment rules which defends Britain against the systemic attack of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) model and reinforces the economic system and values in which we believe. To its credit, HM Government has mildly reinforced the National Security and Investment Act and the Research Collaboration Advice Team (which advises academia and others on science and technology collaboration), both 2021 legacies of the previous Conservative administration.

A coherent strategy requires better government structures and better international coordination

Part 2 of this mini-series considered the need for top level and regular government meetings on the PRC, with lower-level meetings to monitor implementation of policy as well as regular collective agreement on science and technology policy by departmental scientific advisers through the establishment of a Scientific Advisory Committee. A prerequisite for a clear PRC policy is clarity about who ‘owns’ or is ultimately responsible for such a policy.

HM Government should adopt a whole-of-society approach to combat the much-used CCP tactic of going around the back of central governments and dealing directly with local governments, which are often less aware of CCP issues and methods. In the light of the ‘Manchesterism’ championed by Andy Burnham, presumed incoming Prime Minister, this assumes greater importance.

There is scant evidence that the UK is working more closely with its allies, the ‘Five Eyes’ countries, the European Union (EU), and major Asian economies. To return to EVs, no account appears to be taken of the American ‘Connected Vehicle Rule’, which bans Chinese connectivity software and hardware in vehicles, even though the United States (US) is the market destination of over 15% of British vehicles. If the EU takes serious measures against Chinese vehicle exports, the UK will become a dumping ground.

The current government would surely not quarrel with the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh and its emphasis on ‘Shape the international environment – Shape, balance, compete, and cooperate to create the conditions for an open and stable international order’. Yet, the current PRC policy, which one senior official described at a non-attributable briefing in early 2025 as ‘say more internally, say less externally’, is hardly designed to give Britain a leading role in shaping the current most important geopolitical issue. Others cannot follow if they do not know where they are being led.

Conclusion

Publishing a strategy is not beyond a Labour government. In January 2009, Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, issued an official PRC strategy paper: ‘The UK and China: A Framework for Engagement’.

Despite its urgency, the current prime ministerial and subsequent ministerial reshuffles will delay work on building a PRC strategy – or ‘strategic framework’, HM Government’s preferred term. The economic and national security threats from the PRC’s science and technology, industrial policies, undervaluation of the currency, and more are already being felt; jobs and prosperity are already being eroded. These effects will be felt even more keenly in the lifetime of this government.

A year ago, Lammy said, ‘The Audit has painted a complex picture, but it has provided us with a clear way forward. The UK’s approach to China will be founded on progressive realism’. This sounds more like an art movement than a political guide. Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ comes to mind.

Appendix: Actions to ensure clarity on PRC policy

Without the will to resource or implement, there is no strategy. Below is a selection of actions which would show that the new Prime Minister is more serious than their predecessor about implementing a thought-through strategy. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

• Recognise that the PRC is a threat by including it on the ‘enhanced tier’ of the Foreign Interests Registration Scheme under the National Security Act.

• Set out in detail those areas where Britain can cooperate with the PRC and within what limits (hitherto much has been said about cooperation on ‘global goods’, but no coherent guidelines have been produced).

• Issue a coherent policy on Chinese investment in the UK, which protects long-term economic and national security and starts with the automotive industry.

• Put forward measures to reduce Britain’s supply chain dependency.

• Under the recently passed National Security (State Threats) Act, designate the United Front Work Department of the CCP as a hostile organisation.

• Allot greater funding for the National Security Strategic Investment Fund, to ensure that startup companies with dual-use or emerging technologies do not sell out to Chinese funding.

• Populate the ‘debarment list’ of the Procurement Act with those Chinese companies the adoption of whose technologies represent a threat to national security (over two years since the Act was passed, the debarment list remains empty).

• Work with the EU and other free and open countries to establish arrangements for trade and investment, similar to those envisaged for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Adviser to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Research Fellow in International Security at RUSI.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

The Thinker | No. 08/2026

This article is the third part of a mini-series analysing the ‘China Audit’ one year after the publication of His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s National Security Strategy. Part 1 can be read here, Part 2 here, and Part 4 here.

Strategy and tactics are powerful weapons with which our Party leads the people in transforming the world, changing practices, and driving historical progress.

– Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 7th February 2023

Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto promised to ‘improve the UK’s [United Kingdom] capability to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities [the People’s Republic of] China [PRC] poses through an audit of our bilateral relationship.’ A year later in June 2025, David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, presented the results to Parliament, declaring that ‘the audit is less a single act than an ongoing exercise which will continue to guide the UK’s approach to China.’ On the anniversary of the ‘China Audit’, how continuous and clear is that guidance?

Aims and intended outcomes

The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), charged with carrying out the Audit, spoke of promoting four aims in the conduct of Britain’s relations with the PRC (discussed at an FCDO briefing on 23rd January 2025):

1. Secure growth of the UK’s economy;

2. National and international security;

3. Climate change and energy issues; and

4. Encouraging the PRC to play a responsible role in the international rules-based order.

These form a knotty nexus. Trade and investment can cut across security concerns, and climate change emission targets may contradict long-term economic or national security considerations. These contradictions exemplify why the UK needs a PRC strategy – more so than it does for dealing with the United States (US), the European Union (EU), or Russia. Britain shares interests, values, and history with the first two, while relations with Russia are uncomplicated, if antagonistic. Lammy spoke of Chinese ‘attacks on the rules-based order’, begging the question of how to encourage the PRC to play a responsible international role, given its very different values and interests.

The audit was to have four outcomes:

• A public document about the China Audit and British interests. This would be limited in scope;

• A non-public ‘Strategic Framework’, guiding government departments (ministries) in how to pursue the UK’s interests;

• Clearer guidance to business, academia, Parliament, and society on how to engage with the PRC; and

• A review of PRC expertise, both inside and outside government, consideration of how better to ensure that His Majesty’s (HM) Government could benefit from outside expertise, and how to ensure longer-term resilience.

HM Government’s progress report card

Space prevents a comprehensive look at all aspects of UK-PRC relations since the China Audit. Those mentioned by Lammy in his statement to Parliament have seen some limited progress.

‘On security, the audit described a full spectrum of threats’

Domestically, Lammy mentioned espionage, cyber attacks, transnational repression, and Critical National Infrastructure (CNI); internationally, the PRC’s aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan, and support for Russia in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Lammy noted that ‘We are updating our state threats legislation, following Jon Hall’s review’, the need for which became obvious when HM Government could not bring itself to deem the PRC a threat for the espionage trial of Chris Cash and Chris Berry later that autumn. However, whatever the final National Security (State Threats) Act says (it is still before Parliament), whether the PRC is recognised as a threat and whether action is taken will remain a question of political will.

Other responses to the security threats included an increase in funding for the intelligence services of £600 million. This covers the spending review period up to 2028-2029, translating into an annual increase of below 15%. HM Government has tightened and made more precise the National Security and Investment Act, and has increased sensitive sectors of CNI from 17 to 19.

There has been a small uptick in calling out the PRC over cyber attacks. The CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said that it managed over 200 incidents in 12 months, 75% identified as coming from state actors. Assuming that a third of those might be Chinese, this is not a vigorous policy of shaming, although there may be operational security reasons for not calling out each and every attack.

HM Government has also not been loud in calling out the extent of Beijing’s support for the Kremlin, although it has started to sanction Chinese companies – around 20 since the China Audit.

Trade and investment

Critics of HM Government’s policy on trade should acknowledge the Audit’s intention to promote exports. It commends Joint Economic and Trade Commissions and ‘the launch of a new online hub bringing together detailed and specific business advice’. Speaking of ‘the important role China can play in delivering UK growth’ may be optimistic, given CCP policies of self-reliance, dual circulation, and ‘Made in China 2025’, which increasingly result in falling imports. It is also pertinent to ask whether the difficulties of exporting to the PRC mean that HM Government should be putting more effort into supporting exports to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as these collectively add up to around the same as exports to the PRC. While ministerial support and visits are welcome, the efforts of businesses themselves are what determine exporting success.

Ministers and officials continue to say that Chinese investment is crucial to British growth prospects. Yet, according to most recent figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), of the stock of foreign investment in the UK over the last 25 years, only 0.1% is Chinese (the ONS methodology almost certainly understates the figure, but even at 1% or 2%, it is not high). The future may not be different: a failing Chinese economy is likely to invest less than in the past. Meanwhile, Chinese companies invest not to dispense charity, but to obtain technology. Others – connected vehicle manufacturers would be an example – would introduce technology to the UK. In both cases, security grounds suggest rejecting the investment.

Values and the rule-based order

The China Audit claimed that HM Government would continue to confront the PRC on destabilising activity in the South China Sea, abuses of freedom of navigation, human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet, and commitments under the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong. It would not change Britain’s position on Taiwan.

Ministers claim that they raise these issues in meetings with opposite numbers. No doubt they do, although the terms and vigour are not known. However, the CCP no longer listens, no matter which country speaks. Actions are what count, such as sanctioning those responsible for human rights abuses, or making it clear in advance that an invasion or blockade of Taiwan would lead to a panoply of economic sanctions.

Domestically, actions such as excluding Confucius Institutes from universities, ensuring that the Chinese Students and Scholars Association acts as a normal university society and not an arm of the CCP and its United Front Work Department, and full reciprocity over visas for journalists, would make good the China Audit’s claims of protecting British values.

The final part of this mini-series looks at the failure of HM Government to live up to the aims of the China Audit, and offers some recommendations for filling the gaps.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Adviser to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Research Fellow in International Security at RUSI.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

Earlier this week, a typhoon churning over the People’s Republic of China (PRC) caused 60,000 people to be evacuated from their homes, prompting the country’s leadership to call for an ‘all out rescue’ effort. As these efforts were underway, facing warnings of the incoming Typhoon Bavi, leaders of member countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) met for an annual summit in Ankara. A tacit agreement was reportedly made between some to omit mentioning the World Cup red card fiasco to the responsible alliance member, who also happens to be its largest benefactor – the United States (US).

On more serious matters, Mark Rutte, Secretary General of NATO, stated that the alliance cannot afford to be ‘naive’ about the PRC, in reference to the recent missile test Beijing conducted only on Monday (see 2.1 below).

The PRC keeps a watchful eye on NATO. For a long time, the alliance did not solicit emotive analysis from Beijing, although the tone has hardened in the past few years, with an op-ed from state media published just yesterday claiming it is ‘a Cold War relic that should have long since been consigned to the dustbin of history’.

Beijing’s concern is whether the alliance may seek to expand its remit to the Indo-Pacific, an anxiety frequently mentioned in international-facing state media. NATO has signed Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes with Japan, and other partnerships with Australia and New Zealand, which the PRC sees as evidence of the alliance ‘stirring up conflict and instability’ on its doorstep.

As the NATO leaders agreed upon a £37 billion missile acquisition, the PRC and Russia held their annual joint military drills in the waters and airspace off the coast of Qingdao.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

The Thinker | No. 07/2026

This article is the second part of a mini-series analysing the ‘China Audit’ one year after the publication of His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s National Security Strategy. Part 1 can be read here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

Benefiting more from current external expertise

The ‘China Audit’ team rightly spoke of the need to ensure that His Majesty’s (HM) Government benefits from non-government experience of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). PRC experts in the United Kingdom (UK) are not thick on the ground. Think tanks can afford very few PRC-focused staff, and have difficulty in offering them meaningful career progression. Funding is scarce and generally businesses are not keen to help out, either because they have no business in the PRC or because they do, and do not want to be associated with free-ranging expressions on the country.

Where HM Government does support think tanks, it tends to be project-based, which does little to help pay salaries and running costs. It may fail to give value for money. 18 months ago, the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) launched five tenders of £100,000 to produce one report each. Far more could have been achieved by giving five think tanks a £100,000 grant each, with a requirement to produce 5-10 reports relevant to government concerns (and still have money to finance more work from which HM Government might benefit). Time in preparing the tenders, both in government and think tanks, could be better spent producing useful material.

While there has been an increase in meetings between officials and outside experts, it does not appear to be systematic. The same is true of commissioning of reports useful to PRC issues across a variety of departments. Giving the Great Britain-China Centre, or a similar organisation with extensive contacts, a coordinating role to canvas requirements would take the burden off HM Government.

Growing future expertise

The PRC is not going to go away. Growing longer-term expertise from which HM Government can benefit must start now. Unfortunately, an obsession with speaking Mandarin is a hindrance, and the ministers in charge of the Department for Education (DFE) have consistently refused to contemplate changes.

Over the last ten years, the Mandarin Excellence Programme has spent £26 million. During that time the number of students taking A Level Chinese language has halved; almost all students already speak a Chinese dialect. The reason is not hard to see. Particularly at A Level, students will avoid subjects where top grades needed for university entrance are difficult to attain. Those new to Chinese cannot compete with native speakers, for whom an A Level is an easy option.

One imaginative solution, long campaigned for, is to launch an A Level in Chinese civilisation without a language requirement. This follows the successful model of the classical civilisation A Level, which has helped to raise undergraduate numbers. The likelihood is that the same form of introduction would induce more undergraduates to study Chinese at university, where the language tuition is aimed at non-native speakers.

Those campaigning for this new A Level have done the hard preparation of a curriculum. They see no difficulty in getting the financial sponsorship to subsidise it over the first few years: top companies and university bodies such as the Russell Group have already expressed support. Yet, the DFE has consistently blocked the proposal. Incredibly, the curriculum assessment the DFE put out last November does not mention China nor Chinese in its 197 pages, except in one footnote.

‘The audit showed that under the last Government there was…a profound lack of knowledge regarding China’s culture, history and – most importantly – language’, said David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, in his June 2025 statement. HM Government has shown a profound lack of imagination in trying to correct that.

A coherent China strategy requires better government structures

In 2019, HM Government replied to the Foreign Affairs Committee report:

The policy is underpinned by detailed cross-Whitehall implementation plans against which progress is monitored and directed through regular and frequent meetings of the China National Strategy Implementation Group (NSIG), led by the SRO [Senior Responsible Officer], reporting to the NSC(O) and through that body to the NSC.

The National Security Council (NSC) rarely discusses the PRC, averaging

about once every two years. Senior officials also meet irregularly and infrequently. Very few at Director General level have any direct PRC experience. There should be quarterly meetings of the NSC on the PRC chaired by the Prime Minister, which would reconcile differences over PRC policy between departments. The NSIG has lost momentum and relevance. In tandem with quarterly meetings of the NSC, there should be quarterly meetings of the NSC(O), that is of the top officials in departments, chaired by the National Security Adviser (NSA).

If this seems excessive, consider the amount of ministerial time spent on crises in Ukraine and the Middle East. The ‘urgent’ too often crowds out the ‘important’, and as the head of the German security service said: ‘Russia is the storm, China is climate change.’

Similarly, science and technology issues require a collective consideration by departmental scientific advisers on more than an ad hoc basis. HM Government should establish a Scientific Advisory Committee to be a centre of expertise on science and technology security – the main area of threat – to coordinate the planning and implementation of protective measures across central and local governments, business, and academia. This would be the ultimate authority for deciding on Chinese investment, cooperation, and involvement in the British economy. It would also inform the Research Collaboration Advice Team in its work on ensuring that scientific and technological research in the UK is not fed into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military development programmes, as well as work on the National Security and Investment Act.

A coherent PRC strategy also requires ministers and officials to stay in post for far longer than is the current norm. There have been seven foreign secretaries in the last decade, and six ministers of state with responsibility for the PRC. By contrast, in the PRC, apart from the short-lived Qin Gang, Wang Yi has been foreign minister throughout that time. Officials often move jobs after as little as a year, compared to the three years or more of the past. A balance needs to be struck between benefiting from PRC expertise remaining longer in one post and spreading PRC knowledge throughout the system. Currently, promotion chasing incentivises fast rotation between posts.

Conclusion

HM Government’s elucidation of the implications of the China Audit has been – to be generous – sparse. For all Lammy’s lambasting of the previous government’s performance on the PRC, the current one has done little better on transparency or accountability. If the new Prime Minister wants Labour to ‘continue to guide the UK’s approach to China’, the first step should surely be to work up a clear action plan to deliver FCDO, Whitehall, and wider British societal China expertise. The second would be to set up the structures and command lines to devise and oversee the implementation of a strategy.

This would not be expensive. It is a matter of better exploiting the PRC experience that HM Government already has, not least in the FCDO, and ensuring that officials who have picked up useful experience spend more of their careers on the PRC, and are sufficiently rewarded – in pay and promotion.

Funding think tanks and academics is also not expensive. The mentioned £500,000 spent on five reports could have funded a PRC-focused researcher in each of the five think tanks. Furthermore, HM Government could have directed much of that research.

Similarly, for the longer term, the expense of getting the youth interested in China studies is not great. For example, those campaigning for a Chinese civilisation A Level have costed implementation for the initial years at £6 million, and are confident that they can find outside sponsorship. Currently, the number of students studying Chinese in Britain is around 250. That number is not sufficient to ‘improve the UK’s capability to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities China poses’ in future.

Recommendations

Improving ‘China literacy’ within the civil service:

• Future cuts in the civil service should take into account specific skills needed;

• Mechanisms should be set up within the civil service to incentivise cross postings, which would spread PRC expertise more widely within departments;

• The FCDO’s Supervisory Board and sub-committees should include an official with extensive experience of the PRC. That official should be responsible for ensuring PRC capability and FCDO structures congruent with agreed PRC goals, as well as championing the right approach from the rest of Whitehall and society;

• Training on the PRC should be extended to more officials in departments other than the FCDO. More higher level officials should receive such training.

Fostering China knowledge and exchange in the broader community:

• Increase financial support for think tanks and PRC experts in academia;

• Establish a unified system for commissioning work from outside experts and for ensuring the results reach those in all departments with an interest in the topic;

• The DFE should accept and promote an A Level in Chinese civilisation.

Ensuring the creation and implementation of a coherent China strategy:

• The Prime Minister should chair quarterly meetings of the NSC on the PRC;

• The NSC(O), chaired by the NSA, should meet at least as often, draw up plans on the PRC and ensure their progress;

• HM Government should establish a Scientific Advisory Committee to be a centre of expertise on science and technology security to coordinate the planning and implementation of protective measures across central and local governments, business, and academia;

• Ministers and officials should remain a minimum of three years in any PRC-related post.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Adviser to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Research Fellow in International Security at RUSI.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

The Thinker | No. 06/2026

This article is the first part of a mini-series analysing the ‘China Audit’ one year after the publication of His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s National Security Strategy. Part 2 can be read here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto promised to ‘improve the UK’s [United Kingdom] capability to understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities [the People’s Republic of] China [PRC] poses through an audit of our bilateral relationship.’ A year later in June 2025, David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, presented the results to Parliament, declaring that ‘the audit is less a single act than an ongoing exercise which will continue to guide the UK’s approach to China.’

On the anniversary of the ‘China Audit’, this mini-series of articles looks at how continuous and clear that guidance is. This first part considers how well prepared His Majesty’s (HM) Government and British society is to ‘cooperate, compete, challenge’ – to use Labour’s slogan. No strategy (strategy, strategic framework, guidance – the name is not important) is possible if HM Government does not have the requisite China expertise and organisational structures.

A new Prime Minister and set of ministers have the opportunity to look again at the UK’s strategy for dealing with the PRC. They should start by ensuring that the ‘capabilities’ are in place, not just for their time in office, but also for the longer term. Will they take it?

Does Britain even need a ‘China strategy’?

The PRC is an exception. In the case of the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia, reduced trade and investment on top of overall differences made, and make, policy-making less complex, with fewer diverging interests in government and society. However, the UK has extensive links with the PRC, thus the size of risk and opportunity, the differences in values and interests, are on a different scale from other countries.

Strategic guidance is needed to ensure consistency and to reconcile inevitable contradictions between economic growth, national security, and climate change concerns. HM Government is not averse to strategies: a China Strategy was published in 2009, while the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh mentioned over 20 strategies (including for Russia and the Pacific) – but not one for the PRC.

Outcomes of the China Audit

There were to be four outcomes (discussed at a Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office [FCDO] briefing on 23rd January 2025 attended by the author):

1. A public document about the China Audit and British interests. This would be limited in scope;

2. A non-public ‘Strategic Framework’, guiding government departments (ministries) in how to pursue the UK’s interests;

3. Clearer guidance to business, academia, Parliament, and society on how to engage with the PRC; and

4. A review of PRC expertise, both inside and outside government, consideration of how better to ensure that HM Government could benefit from outside expertise, and how to ensure longer-term resilience.

This article and the one that follows examines the fourth of those aims, namely maximising PRC expertise both inside and outside HM Government. It also looks at what structures are necessary to ensure that understanding of the PRC and its policies are translated into action. Three areas are pertinent: the FCDO, which must ultimately ‘own’ PRC policy; wider Whitehall, most of whose departments have concerns over the PRC; and broader society, which may inform HM Government and help to provide or train its officials.

The FCDO: ‘Too few mandarins speak Mandarin’

Lammy spoke of a new PRC ‘fast stream’ in the FCDO. However, the present cuts being imposed (around 40% of home posts and 5% of those abroad) are not designed to preserve the China cadre. Redundancies are voluntary and incentivised financially. As often happens, the more able take advantage, knowing that they are employable outside HM Government. There has been no attempt to impose limitations upon those whose skills are in the highest demand. At least two of the FCDO’s most senior PRC experts have left.

Another effect of civil service cuts is as a brake upon interdepartmental exchanges. To be effective, officials in other ministries need to add PRC expertise to their mainstream professional skill set. However, the FCDO, given its fewer posts, is reserving them for its own officers. This prevents the spread of China expertise throughout Whitehall, mirroring a wider problem.

Each department manages its own human resources, headcount, and needs. There is no incentive to facilitate career paths that include postings in other departments aimed at acquiring expertise to benefit the civil service as a whole. Cross-postings are therefore few, and usually unattractive, because they may come at the expense of promotion, which remains in the gift of the official’s parent department.

There are no sinologists on the FCDO’s Supervisory Board, and none in the various sub-committees. One member has – perhaps dated – China experience from time serving as adviser to the then Governor of Hong Kong. A second member has served as the Deputy Head of Mission in Beijing, a role more concerned with the management of the embassy and the FCDO network in the PRC than the intricacies of policy and relations.

The question of who is responsible for PRC capability is crucial. This surely belongs to the FCDO: the clue is in the name, and indeed in Lammy’s lead in conducting the China Audit. The current restructuring inside the FCDO aims – or should do – to produce a policy machine capable of leading London’s relations with Beijing. That in turn requires a board-level member responsible for ensuring PRC capability and FCDO structures congruent with agreed PRC goals, as well as championing the right approach from the rest of Whitehall and wider society.

Whitehall PRC expertise

Lammy spoke of a ‘global China network and training over 1,000 civil servants on China policy in the past year.’ There has indeed been an increase in PRC training, mainly through the Great Britain-China Centre, a body considerably funded by the FCDO. Perhaps half of the officials who attend its courses are from the FCDO. More need to come from other departments.

At the risk of repetition, the PRC’s policy challenges are cross-cutting. HM Government needs people who understand Chinese energy, currencies, data, and supply chains, hence the importance of rotation between departments.

There should be greater participation by senior decision-makers, both in the FCDO and other departments. Training should also be extended to regional governments, where understanding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its ways lags far behind that in the capital.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Adviser to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Research Fellow in International Security at RUSI.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

This is the 13th Tangram from Observing China, where the leading China experts give a diverse range of succinct responses to key questions on the development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

On 17th June 2026, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) released a sweeping new white paper: ‘More Just and Equitable Global Governance’, positioning Beijing as the architect of a reformed, United Nations (UN)-centric international system. By championing the so-called ‘Global South’ and calling for true multilateralism, the paper seeks to present the PRC not as a disruptor of the global order, but as a stabilising force in an increasingly volatile geopolitical era.

Yet, beneath this rhetorical commitment to global solidarity, the reality of Beijing’s international alignments faces scrutiny. The PRC’s vast and carefully curated network of ‘strategic partnerships’ – most notably its enduring ties with Russia, its strategic engagements with Iran amid ongoing Middle Eastern conflicts, and its broader economic outreach to the developing world – is routinely tested by global crises.

Both Beijing and its partners frequently tout these relationships as evidence of an emerging, multipolar consensus, leveraging them to secure vital resources, circumvent trade restrictions, and counter the United States’ (US) hegemony. However, in times of acute international crisis, the PRC has demonstrated a calculated pragmatism. Beijing has historically hesitated to cross critical economic and military red lines, striving to balance its commitments to its strategic partners against the overriding domestic imperative to forestall comprehensive economic decoupling from free and open nations’ markets.

International analysts remain divided on whether this web of diplomatic alignments constitutes a genuine, resilient coalition, or merely a transactional façade that fractures under pressure. As such, for this edition of the Tangram, we asked five experts the following question: When push comes to shove, do China’s ‘strategic partnerships’ carry real weight?

Charles Parton OBE

Chief Adviser, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy

The PRC’s ‘strategic partnerships’ should be thought of as pizzas and toppings. There is a base – a ‘partnership’, almost always spread with tomato ‘strategic’, and to which a range of topping adjectives can be added according to taste. Some toppings are more expensive or of higher value than others. Countries can start by adding ‘cooperative’ and ‘friendly’, progress to ‘comprehensive’, and then move on to ‘all-weather’.

Toppings are not mutually exclusive: ‘all-weather comprehensive’ is not uncommon. The pizzeria has updated its menu, for example, adding the topping ‘for the new era’ and ‘community with a shared future’, whose flavour seems to be particularly appealing to countries of the Global South – the full phrase, ‘community with a shared future for mankind’, is of course a prime ingredient of thought on diplomacy by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Beijing likes to use these toppings for symbolism, signalling, and reward. ‘For a new era’ suggests that global governance is changing, and that the country supports the PRC’s efforts to establish a different world order. Russia was the first to add this topping. Pakistan and the PRC are close, and since 2018 they have agreed to build a ‘closer China-Pakistan community of shared future in the new era’, combining two toppings. Often one of the outcomes of leaders’ visits will be the announcement of the addition of a new topping.

Once ordered, a topping cannot be removed. The United Kingdom (UK) is the only country to have established a ‘Global Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century’. This was in 2015, on the establishment of the ‘Golden Era’. Poor relations since then have not led to demotion. Since the visit by Sir Keir Starmer, outgoing Prime Minister, to the PRC early this year, the phrase ‘long-term and consistent comprehensive strategic partnership’ has been bandied about. It is not clear whether this is formally on the topping menu.

The PRC does not have allies (only with North Korea does it have an official alliance). It is a solipsistic power. It does not wish to be bound by obligations; rather, it prizes the flexibility of ill-defined partnerships. These toppings should be regarded as a form of propaganda, which might play on the vanity of some leaders, but in the words of Gilbert and Sullivan (in Ruddigore), ‘so it really doesn’t matter, matter, matter, matter, matter’. Seeking truth from facts or acts is a better guide to the PRC’s foreign relations.

Dr Sari Arho Havrén

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Geopolitical Adviser, Business Finland

The question contains its own error. ‘When push comes to shove’ is a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Article 5-type ‘real weight’ test: it asks whether partners will fight, bleed, and hold the line. However, Beijing has never built its partnerships to pass that test. Judging them against free and open nations’ alliances is like comparing apples to oranges. The honest question is not whether they carry weight, but what they are for.

The PRC’s partnership architecture is deliberately graded, non-binding, and entrapment-averse. Optionality is in the design. Beijing studied Soviet overreach and drew the obvious lesson: no mutual-defence tripwires, no clients it is obliged to rescue, no commitments that convert a partner’s crisis into its own. The absence of hard guarantees preserves freedom of manoeuvre and a narrative win over ‘Cold War blocs’. So, the weight depends entirely on the metric, negligible as collective defence, considerable as an instrument for eroding US primacy without firing a shot.

The ‘CRINK’ – comprising the PRC, Russian, Iran, and North Korea – could perhaps be seen as the paradigm case. It is not an alliance but an alignment without obligation: a force multiplier for sanctions evasion, military-industrial sustainment, diplomatic cover, and the normalisation of revisionism. It works because no member is committed enough to become a liability.

Yet, deepening cooperation, which is particularly visible in the Chinese-Russian relationship, should not be ignored. That being said, while the Kremlin’s dependence on Beijing has become a structural submission, it is far from a matter of simple fidelity; the relationship runs deeper than merely what a junior partner accepts after exhausting its alternatives. Chinese-Russian shared ambitions are well-served by the arrangement, although the relationship’s sternest test is likely still ahead.

Here is the trap that Beijing has built for itself. The PRC wants to be a system builder without the costs of an alliance leader. However, partnerships that give little back in times of crisis invite hedging. Gulf states court Washington and Beijing simultaneously, and Central Asia plays every suitor. The very flexibility that shields the PRC from entrapment also caps the loyalty it can command. Partners drift if they cannot extract substantial returns, and the endgame of seeding an alternative order stalls under its own logic.

So do these partnerships carry weight? Yes – but a contingent, reversible weight, and that is exactly the vulnerability. Beijing’s great strength, that it can never be entrapped, is also its ceiling: The order that the PRC wants to build demands the very commitments it has spent decades refusing to make.

Dr Edward Howell

Lecturer in International Relations, University of Oxford

Mao Zedong once alleged that the PRC’s relationship with North Korea was ‘as close as lips and teeth’, where ‘if the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold’. This characterisation, however, fails to capture the nuances in the PRC’s frosty past and present relationship with its now-nuclear neighbour of North Korea.

For over two decades, the PRC has been – and remains – North Korea’s principal economic benefactor, accounting for over 95% of North Korea’s external trade. Over the past year, trade levels have rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels, but Beijing remains frustrated at having failed to persuade Pyongyang to adopt a similar ‘socialist’ economic model to its own.

After North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006 – while the Six-Party Talks, hosted by the PRC, were ongoing (although North Korea suspended its participation) – Beijing called upon Pyongyang to denuclearise. Over time, however, the PRC’s tolerance for its nuclear neighbour has grown, especially since the 2020s. Beijing and Moscow supported the UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea, owing to its expanding nuclear and missile programmes – the last of which was imposed in December 2017. Yet, like Russia, the PRC’s commitment to them has been flimsy.

In aiding North Korean sanctions evasion through illicitly facilitating coal and oil transfers and hosting tens of thousands of the country’s workers, today’s PRC now accepts a nuclear North Korea in all but name. Its relationship with North Korea has gone from what can be called ‘reluctant tolerance’ to ‘unreluctant acceptance’.

This certainly carries weight. When Xi visited Pyongyang last month, there was no mention of North Korea’s nuclear programme, let alone denuclearisation. The PRC does not want to bear responsibility for the North Korean nuclear issue.

The PRC’s attitude to the newfound alliance between North Korea and Russia has often been incorrectly described as one of ire. It may be feeling emetic at North Korea having two treaty allies (of which it is one) and itself having only one in North Korea. Yet, were Beijing truly angry, it could stop enabling the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine by supplying dual-use technologies and cease helping Pyongyang to circumvent sanctions. It has done neither of these things.

The PRC’s priority on the Korean Peninsula has long been stability. Its red lines remain to ensure that North Korea does not do anything that goes against its interests or drags it into any unwanted conflict. Crucially, however, these uncertainties will not stop it from colluding with the Kremlin and/or Pyongyang to undermine the US-led international order. Here, the PRC is highly complicit, whether through its own geopolitical and economic coercion or its conniving with other rogue states. It is about time that free and open nations took it seriously.

Dr Danielle Reeder

Law, Defence, and Geopolitical Affairs Researcher

Naturally, there is a prerequisite question concerning which pressure points are being applied, and in which direction such tacit forces would seek to push the PRC.

The ‘strategic partnerships’ that Beijing has made in the interest of advancing economic strength, as well as geopolitical dominance, are intrinsically linked to the belief that the US-led hegemonic order should be dislodged, or is in fact coming to an end. This bet is hedged against a successful record of the PRC increasing its share of global consumer markets, engineering intellectual property to supplant American technological dominance, and selectively undermining US sanction regimes.

At the base of Beijing’s strategic partnerships is the cohort of non-aligned states able to reinforce mutual and material gains, which shift global attitudes in perceiving Russia, Iran, and North Korea as errant states. As long as the Kremlin provides reliable energy sourcing and purchases military technology; as long as Tehran permits preferential shipping access and discounted crude; and as long as a placated Pyongyang serves as a wildcard deterrent against escalating military action in the Indo-Pacific, the PRC’s strategic partnerships will not be compelled into conciliatory realignment with free and open nations’ interests.

However, these ‘strategic partnerships’ are indeed transactional and limited. The strength of the PRC’s relationship with Russia at least will be tested by Beijing’s growing discomfort regarding over-reliance on Russian energy, and weariness of the Kremlin’s more casual attitude towards ensuring global market stability. Both the PRC and Russia will face leadership succession in the near future. Even if committed to maintaining the party line, any incoming regime will be eager to assert definition, which may or may not follow suit of an arrangement between Xi and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

Furthermore, the PRC’s own global ambitions threaten to weaken the integrity of its partnerships. Despite entering a new era of innovation, a number of Chinese industries still rely on state intervention and subsidies to compete unevenly in free markets, which could begin to overwhelm and frustrate trade partners. Although long anticipated, a move on Taiwan will demand a hard cessation of certain economic-based arrangements, particularly among European nations. The increasingly aggressive tactics of the PRC’s distant-water fishing fleet may become a sticking point for coastal partners in the Global South.

The PRC has benefited greatly from open, global exchange, but does not invite expanding investment at home, and will struggle to match the fiscal maturity of New York or London. Beijing may be able to disrupt the Washington consensus, but cannot sustain offensive military action without formal allies in defence. It may challenge US leadership, but it cannot replace it. Ultimately, the PRC’s ‘strategic partnerships’ do carry weight to the extent of being able to evade the traditional containment strategies of the free and open international order, but its relationships possess fissures that will expand under the stress of overleveraged objectives.

Grace Theodoulou

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

When it comes to diplomacy, Beijing is careful not to make any commitments that could see it dragged into an armed conflict. Boasting ‘partnerships’ with well over 100 countries around the world, with varying degrees in depth and scope, the CCP employs characteristically obscure terminology for these agreements.

Chinese diplomatic nomenclature is not fully standardised, and different words can be added to these terms which would leave the average reader none the wiser. With Pakistan – Beijing’s closest security partner – for example, the PRC holds an ‘All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership’, while with Russia it has a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for a New Era’, which has included joint military drills. Regardless of the label, Beijing does not have any mutual defence treaties with other countries.

What many have noticed in the past year is that these partnerships offer little help from the PRC when the going gets tough. When Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated earlier this year, Beijing responded with little more than words of reproach, although American intelligence pointed to Chinese supply of weapons to Tehran’s authoritarian regime earlier this year during the conflict. In fact, many of these ‘strategic partnerships’ appear to favour the PRC disproportionately. Tehran has seen little of the 25-Year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement it signed with Beijing in 2021, which saw the PRC agree to invest US$400 billion (£300 billion) in Iran over the next 25 years.

Rather, this deal gave Beijing the ability to purchase Iranian oil at discounted rates due to sanctions, with the PRC purchasing roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports. However, these only account for approximately 12% of total Chinese oil imports, leaving Tehran far more reliant on Beijing. Perhaps it is also worth noting that in April, both Russia and the PRC voted in favour of Iran during a UN Security Council meeting, vetoing a resolution calling for Tehran to cease attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. Beyond preserving Iran’s leverage in the ongoing conflict, the PRC also retained its status as an intermediary.

It is not helpful to try to find a more familiar equivalent of these ‘strategic partnerships’, and they should be understood as best they can in their own right. That being said, it will certainly be interesting to see what – if anything – Beijing does to protect its ‘ironclad friendship’ with Cuba, should Washington act on its threats towards the Caribbean nation.

If you would like to explore any of the Council on Geostrategy’s PRC-focused research papers, click here to visit the China Observatory.

The image at the top of this page has been generated using AI.

Subscribe now

Yesterday, two important measures came into effect regarding the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which I have covered over the past few months. First is the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which Beijing adopted in March this year.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) says it is ‘to further strengthen [sic] the unity and cohesion of the Chinese nation’, and that the PRC’s ethnic minorities will benefit from it. However, human rights experts outside the PRC warn that it aims to erode their rights and rituals, with a view to forced assimilation.

The other, less controversial (to some) measure that came into effect was the tax on small packages entering the European Union (EU) from third countries, in a move seen to be targeting the PRC. According to the EU, 91% of all parcels valued at less than €150 (~£130) – and thus eligible for not paying tax – which entered the largest multi-country single market in the world in 2024 were from the PRC.

Meanwhile, a high-level business delegation from the PRC is in the UK, with the aim to launch a platform to help British businesses expand in the Chinese market.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

‘We live in a world ​of wolves now. We no longer live in a world of pink ponies and rainbows’, one European Union (EU) diplomat told Reuters last week, as Brussels’ goods trade deficit with Beijing surpassed €1 billion (approximately £900 million) per day.

As Brussels becomes increasingly tough on Beijing’s trade practices, what will this mean for the successor of Sir Keir Starmer, who resigned as Prime Minister on Monday? Andy Burnham, Member of Parliament (MP) for Makerfield, is tipped to succeed Sir Keir. Given his previous position as Mayor of Manchester for nine years prior to returning to Parliament, we do not yet have significant insight into his foreign policy – although he does boast trade negotiation experience with Beijing.

What we do know is that Sir Keir’s successor will inherit the delicate reconstruction of the fragile relationship between London and Beijing forged by Starmer. Besides domestic debates about the prudence of this decision, Brussels’ increasingly tough trade stance on Beijing, along with the intensifying competition between the United States (US) and the PRC, will be additional obstacles to navigate.

Last October, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Donald Trump, President of the US, reached a trade truce with some trepidation. Despite some recent trampling over the truce, Trump appears eager to continue meeting Xi, and this year may see up to four in-person talks.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

Without naming any names, the Group of Seven (G7) countries laid out a plan this week during the annual summit in France to reduce their reliance on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for critical minerals. In a joint statement focusing exclusively on building resilient supply chains in this sector, the leaders stated:

In so doing, we aim to significantly reduce [sic] our dependencies on a single supplier outside the G7 and partner countries for rare earths and permanent magnets to under 60% by 2030 and continuing to decrease further over time, with an ambition to reach 50% as soon as possible.

Additional steps to reduce reliance on the PRC – which manages over 90% of the world’s rare earth processing – include a digital platform which will track supply chain vulnerabilities and predict potential market distortions in the industry.

Naturally, the preliminary deal to end the war in Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz signed by Washington and Tehran stole the spotlight in the coverage of the summit. However, several other key geopolitical issues were raised at the G7 summit, where the PRC’s critical role was discussed with varying levels of overtness.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

The Investigator | No. 09/2026

On 6th June, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched what it called a ‘special maritime traffic law enforcement’ operation in the waters east of Taiwan. The operation was organised by the Chinese Ministry of Transport, rather than the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) or even the China Coast Guard (CCG), although the latter provided support. It involved the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration, the Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration, the East China Sea Navigation Support Centre, and the East China Sea Rescue Bureau.

Beijing claimed that the action was designed to strengthen deep-sea patrols, regulate traffic in key waters, ensure maritime safety, and protect national rights. However, this was not a normal maritime safety operation. It was a carefully staged act of sub-threshold statecraft.

The context: Japan and the Philippines

The immediate context is crucial. On 28th May, Japan and the Philippines elevated their relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, brought into force a Reciprocal Access Agreement, signed an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement, and began discussions on classified military information protection. Japan is also strengthening the Philippine Coast Guard and discussing defence equipment transfers.

The two countries announced the launch of negotiations on the delimitation of their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and continental shelves. These concern the unresolved maritime seam between Japan’s southwestern islands and the northern Philippines: Japanese islands, such as Yonaguni and Hateruma, and Philippine islands, such as Mavulis and Itbayat, generate maritime entitlements which may overlap because the distance between relevant coastlines is less than 400 nautical miles. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), each coastal state may claim up to a 200 nautical mile EEZ and continental shelf, making delimitation necessary where entitlements overlap.

The complication is that this prospective Japanese-Philippine boundary lies east of Taiwan, and overlaps significantly with Taiwan’s own EEZ. This explains why the issue is legally sensitive. Tokyo and Manila are not negotiating sovereignty over Taiwan, nor can any bilateral agreement bind third parties. However, by drawing a line between their own maritime entitlements, they could still affect Taiwan’s fisheries, seabed interests, and long-term legal position. Taipei has therefore welcomed peaceful dialogue under international law while asking both governments to ensure that its rights and existing fisheries mechanisms are not threatened.

Beijing condemned the move as a unilateral infringement of ‘Chinese sovereignty and maritime rights’. Its subsequent operation east of Taiwan should therefore be read less as a safety patrol than as a coercive response to Tokyo and Manila, and as an attempt to erase Taiwan as an independent maritime actor.

Examining the operation

The location of the patrol reinforces this interpretation. The Chinese vessels’ route passed approximately 40 nautical miles from Lanyu (Orchid Island), 51 nautical miles from Taiwan’s eastern coast, 35 nautical miles from Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, and 56 nautical miles from Itbayat in the northern Philippines.

This was not random movement. It placed Chinese state vessels near the maritime boundary linking Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, and directly within the area under discussion in the Japanese-Philippine talks.

The formation itself was equally revealing. Taiwan identified four major Chinese vessels: Haixun 09, a 10,000 tonne maritime safety ship operated by the Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration; Haixun 06, a roughly 6,000 tonne large patrol and rescue vessel under the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration; Haixun 08, a 7,500 tonne deep-sea hydrographic survey vessel operated by the East China Sea Navigation Support Centre; and Donghaijiu 113, a professional maritime rescue ship of roughly 3,500 gross tonnes, or close to 5,000 tonnes at full load, under the East China Sea Rescue Bureau. The operation was also supported by several CCG vessels in the 3,000-4,000 tonne range.

The presence of individual Chinese vessels near Taiwan is not new. Haixun 06 was already the lead vessel in a 2023 joint patrol operation in the central and northern Taiwan Strait. In December 2025, it also participated with the East China Sea Rescue Bureau in the PRC’s first search-and-rescue emergency drill in the Taiwan Shoal. Donghaijiu 113 has an even longer cross-strait history: in 2011, during a warmer period of cross-strait relations under the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, it visited several Taiwanese ports and was opened to the public. CCG vessels, meanwhile, have appeared in major People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises around Taiwan, including the Joint Sword series, as well as in continuing pressure operations around Kinmen.

What is distinctive this time, therefore, is not that Chinese government vessels appeared near Taiwan. It is that four large vessels, belonging to four different Ministry of Transport bodies, were deployed together east of Taiwan in a formation whose functions were mutually reinforcing.

Beijing did not dispatch small patrol craft to perform local traffic management. It assembled a maritime governance task group. Each vessel involved has a nominally civilian or administrative function. Together, however, they create a paramilitary law-enforcement fleet able to sustain presence, collect data, support Command and Control (C2), conduct rescue-justified operations, and impose psychological pressure.

Haixun 09 is especially important. As one of the PRC’s most advanced maritime safety vessels, it is not merely a patrol ship, but a floating command node, equipped for long-range operations, maritime data processing, C2, and inter-agency coordination (or as the PRC calls it, the ‘integrated land, sea, air, and space maritime transport safety security system’).

Haixun 08 is no less significant. Hydrographic survey data may be collected in the name of navigation safety, but bathymetric, acoustic, and seabed information has obvious value in waters where submarine operations and access to the Western Pacific are central to military planning. Meanwhile, Donghaijiu 113 and Haixun 06 give the formation a humanitarian and rescue veneer while still contributing to the PRC’s ability to maintain a persistent state presence.

During the operation, Chinese vessels also contacted at least three foreign-flagged merchant ships by radio, asking them to provide information on their port of departure, destination, and crew numbers. This was not a routine safety measure, instead amounting to unwarranted questioning and harassment of civilian shipping. The wider effect was to signal to international shipping that vessels transiting waters east of Taiwan may face additional political and operational risk. Even without physical interference, such behaviour can affect route planning, insurance calculations, and commercial confidence, thereby contributing indirectly to Taiwan’s strategic isolation.

Taiwan monitored the operation, deploying coast guard vessels in response, and has rejected Beijing’s claim to any sovereign rights in waters east of the island. Contrary to earlier impressions that Chinese ships had remained outside Taiwan’s restricted waters, the four Chinese vessels entered them at 14:05, roughly southwest of Eluanbi. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration responded by deploying vessels, including the Kaohsiung, to shadow them on a one-to-one basis and broadcast warnings demanding their departure.

By 17:30, the four Chinese vessels had been expelled from Taiwan’s restricted waters at a position approximately 33 nautical miles southeast of Eluanbi, although the two sides continued to confront each other at sea. However, this limited restraint should not obscure the operation’s strategic purpose. Beijing did not need to cross a legal threshold to make its point. The purpose was to perform jurisdiction, test Taiwan’s response, and normalise Chinese state presence east of the island.

Consequences for Taiwan

This is how sub-threshold coercion works. The PRC first makes a claim, then performs that claim through patrols, surveys, rescue exercises, safety warnings, traffic-control operations, or inspections. Repetition creates familiarity, which in turn becomes the basis for a ‘new normal’. Over time, a political claim is converted into an administrative fact.

For Taiwan, the stakes are high. Its eastern waters are not peripheral. They are central to the island’s strategic depth and wartime survivability. In a crisis, Taiwan’s eastern ports and sea lines of communication would be vital for humanitarian assistance, evacuation, military logistics, and external support. They also connect to the Miyako Strait and Bashi Channel; two critical maritime gateways between the First Island Chain and the wider Pacific Ocean. If the PRC can impose pressure east of Taiwan, it can begin to threaten the island’s external lifelines and move Taiwan towards strategic isolation.

This should also be viewed against the wider military picture. Around the same period, the PLAN’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG) headed by the Liaoning was operating in the Philippine Sea, conducting intensive flight operations east of the Philippines. Although there is no clear public evidence that the CSG formed part of the Ministry of Transport-led operation, its presence still matters.

The combination of maritime governance vessels closer to Taiwan and a CSG further out in the Philippine Sea suggests an emerging pattern of inner and outer pressure: administrative control, inspection and traffic management functions near Taiwan, reinforced by naval denial and deterrence on the outer perimeter. In effect, Beijing is seeking to incorporate waters east of Taiwan into a broader model of ‘near-seas governance’, expanding the practical meaning of the PRC’s near seas while placing PLA forces beyond the First Island Chain to shape the wider operating environment.

The operation also creates a dangerous dilemma. If Taipei responds weakly, Beijing gains space. If it responds forcefully, the PRC can accuse Taiwan of escalation. By using Ministry of Transport vessels rather than overt naval assets, Beijing sharpens this dilemma. These ships appear civilian-administrative, but their tonnage, endurance, and inter-agency role give them clear paramilitary utility.

The Chinese operation east of Taiwan was not an isolated patrol. It was a demonstration of how Beijing can use civilian, law enforcement, rescue, and survey assets to compress Taiwan’s strategic space while warning Japan and the Philippines. For Britain, the lesson is clear: preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific requires recognising Chinese ‘law enforcement’ for what it increasingly is: coercion by administrative means.

Zack Liao is a Research Associate at the China Strategic Risks Institute (CSRI) and holds an MA in War Studies from King’s College London, with a research interest in strategic sealift. He is also the leading political risk consultant on the PRC at a private intelligence company in London.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

Last week, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – consisting of Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States (US) – issued a joint bulletin warning of sophisticated campaigns by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to solicit classified information on military and intelligence matters.

Much of the content is similar to a warning issued by MI5 last year, whereby the British intelligence services stated that state-sponsored operations from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) saw attempts to recruit Britons with useful or classified information through professional networking sites such as LinkedIn.

But the warning issued last week elaborates on the details of these operations, such as advertisements of fake employment opportunities, with the purpose of extracting sensitive information from applicants during each subsequent interview phase.

The joint warning was published as Yvette Cooper, Foreign Secretary, visited Beijing to hold the 11th UK (United Kingdom)-PRC Strategic Dialogue in the PRC, prompting defensive remarks from Whitehall.

Welcome back to Observing China.

Read more

The Thinker | No. 05/2026

There is a parallel between the 1924 Mallory-Irvine Everest expedition and the recent visit of Donald Trump, President of the United States (US), to Beijing. Trump reached the summit after a delay of six weeks. The outlines of topics discussed are known, but much of the detail remains shrouded in cloud.

Yet, one development stands out. Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), claimed that a ‘most important political understanding’ was reached: a new characterisation of relations as a ‘constructive relationship of strategic stability’.

Whether this typically clunky phrasing will come to symbolise US-PRC relations in the next few years will only become apparent with the passing of time. However, it is highly revealing of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to proceed.

First, however, to clear the decks…

The American shopping list

Understandably, Iran was a top concern. Given the PRC’s oil imports from the Gulf region, as well as its considerable investments there, Trump will have wanted Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CCP, to lean on Tehran to raise the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. Trade, in the form of purchases of Boeing aircraft, agricultural goods, and petrochemicals, was an important area, success in which would allow Trump to play up his deal making abilities – and, with an eye on the November midterm elections, to claim a victory that would impress voters. The establishment of boards for trade and for investment was also on the agenda. On a personal level, Trump relishes the chance to be in the limelight.

The Chinese shopping list

The CCP habitually declares Taiwan to be the core of its core interests. Xi began his exchange with Trump with Taiwan: ‘Handled well, the overall stability of the bilateral relationship can be maintained. Handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even come into conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into a very dangerous situation.’ This was echoed by Wang Yi at a press conference after the visit had concluded: ‘…the Taiwan question is the most important issue between China and the US; one that affects the entire relationship.’

Preserving as much access as possible to the American market and to technology will surely have been a major Chinese aim. For example, Chinese vehicles are currently banned from the US. The PRC seeks access to the highest grade of semiconductors that Washington will allow to be exported. Pressure to relax restrictions in such areas must surely have been on the CCP’s agenda.

Agreement to agree – but on what?

A clearer outline of the summit may emerge over the next few months as specific measures are announced – or not announced. Xi, unsurprisingly, talked of the need to open the Strait of Hormuz, but will he – indeed, can he – do anything to bring that about? There is a parallel with the Taiwan Strait, which the CCP claims is its to control.

This makes it more difficult for Xi to put pressure on the Iranian regime, which claims the same for Hormuz. Maintaining good relations with Tehran now might also be useful for maintaining cheaper oil supplies later, even if at present oil flows are curtailed. However, even if Xi were to apply pressure, it is doubtful that the Iranians would yield: they currently have a powerful weapon in the fight against the US, and they will not abandon it lightly.

Finally, while Xi may have promised Trump not to send arms to Iran – a promise easily given, since proof of delivered weapon systems would blow up Beijing’s claims of being an agent of peace – there is every likelihood that the supply of Chinese components and resources (as opposed to the weapons themselves) will continue, thus helping the Iranian war effort. Even if the CCP is not encouraging the supply, there are few incentives to police it out of existence. Compare Ukraine.

How Trump will react to Xi’s broadsides on Taiwan may become evident from whether he gives the green light to the US$14 billion (£10.4 billion) arms sale to Taiwan currently awaiting his signoff. However, he is unlikely to do this soon after the summit, which would explode whatever good will has been built up.

Trump could divide the sale into smaller packets – not that the CCP would be fooled, but they might choose to make less of a fuss. If he has made approval contingent upon the PRC not supplying Iran with weaponry – although it feels unlikely that Xi would sit down to negotiate around such a proposition, given denials of arming Iran – the definitions of what constitutes ‘weaponry’ and ‘verification’ might lead to considerable friction. Yet, putting weapon supplies to Taiwan into the negotiation basket with the PRC would be an enormous break in the American stance hitherto. It seems unlikely, even if Trump prides himself on his unpredictability.

In the technology sphere, the coming months will show whether the US will put further restraints on Chinese access to American chips, and also on allowing goods with Chinese technology, particularly relating to internet connectivity, into the American market. The summit made no mention of these areas, where in the past there has been some ambiguity. For example, granting access to Nvidia H200 chips contrasts with the Federal Communications Commission putting Chinese drones and routers on its prohibited lists.

Both sides agreed to the establishment of boards to discuss trade and investment. Here, the devil is in the details – or in what counts as sensitive goods and technology. Electric Vehicles (EVs) and green energy are obvious areas for investment given Chinese technological leadership, but automobiles and the automotive industry are emotive subjects for Americans, and Trump favours oil and gas over hydrogen and solar energy.

There will also be bitter arguments between those who worry about the energy supply needed to power Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data and those for whom security is the top priority. Tariff regimes may be relaxed on non-technological goods – Scott Bessent, US Secretary of the Treasury, referenced the import of fireworks (perhaps not the most tactful of choices given the recent explosion in a Hunan factory, which caused many deaths) – but which tariffs and by how much?

Progress in other areas was similarly hazy; AI governance for one. Bessent said that the US and the PRC would ‘set up a protocol in terms of how we go forward with best practices for AI to make sure non-state actors don’t get a hold of these models’. This sounds as though talks are at a very preliminary stage.

‘Strategic stability’ – the CCP’s real aim

In what Wang Yi described as, ‘the most important political understanding they [the two leaders] reached’, Xi, ever the theorist and thinker, introduced a new concept to describe relations with the US: a ‘constructive relationship of strategic stability’. He defined its four pillars as:

1. Positive stability with cooperation as the mainstay;

2. Sound stability with moderate competition;

3. Constant stability with manageable differences; and

4. Enduring stability with promises of peace.

This is a highly revealing move. Most surprising is that a Chinese academic should spell out why. Wu Xinbo, Director at the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University, candidly wrote that: ‘If over the next three years we can realise a relationship of constructive strategic stability between China and the US, then for China, it extends our period of strategic stability and wins time and space for our development (emphasis added).’

The CCP does not trust Trump, regarding him as inconsistent at best, and a leader who will be out of power in under three years. It knows that, apart from the President and a few of his inner circle, there is bipartisan support in Washington for a harsher line on the PRC. It has noted an increasing turbulence in international relations, and has been consistent in a belief that American policy boils down to one of repressing and restraining the PRC’s rise.

A clear strategy has emerged in what the CCP sees primarily as a science and technology struggle or war: build self-reliance, particularly in these fields; avoid dependencies on the US and its allies; and, where possible, create American dependence upon the PRC. This is the underlying logic of the 15th Five-Year Plan, promulgated in March, in which the first two main targets are:

1. Significant progress in high-quality development (i.e., modernisation of existing industries and development of ‘new-quality productive forces’ through science and technology progress); and

2. Substantial improvement in the level of self-reliance and self-strengthening in science and technology.

So a major CCP aim – if not the major aim – of the summit was to continue the current truce in otherwise hostile relations, which resulted from the PRC’s successful strategy of withholding rare earth supplies. The longer that truce lasts, the greater will be Beijing’s development and power, and the less it will have to bow to American pressure.

There is a further gain to the PRC from Xi’s new contribution of ‘strategic stability’ to great power politics: in turbulent times, the concept portrays the country as the force for stability. It also allows the CCP to define any future measures taken by Washington which it dislikes as blatant disregard for an agreement freely entered into.

Not only does this reinforce the current propaganda theme (i.e., that the US is a force for disruption in the world, in contrast to the PRC standing for peace and stability), but it would also give the CCP a stick with which to beat the US; that of failure to adhere to agreements. This helps in the battle for the allegiance of the so-called ‘Global South’ and other countries.

Plenty to fight over

Apart from the issues already outlined, there remain plenty of others which could lead to tension or worse between the two powers: control of the Panama Canal and ports; support for countries such as the Philippines (a large joint military exercise with the US has just concluded); freedom of navigation and flight in the South China Sea; espionage and interference in the US, where new cases are increasing in frequency; and media freedom cover just a few. The CCP’s recent assertiveness will not disappear, although it may be tempered in pursuit of buying ‘strategic stability’ to achieve self-reliance.

Friendship

Still, asked to name the summit’s most important achievement for the United States, Mr Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier: “I think the most important thing is relationship. It’s all about relationship.”

“It sounds like something that doesn’t mean anything, but it’s everything,” Mr Trump said.

If Trump truly believes this, he joins a long line of leaders who have excelled in self-deception. Chinese leaders do not have personal relationships with foreign counterparts. They are, however, masters of hiding a ruthless pursuit of interests underneath the rhetoric of friendship and an overwhelming display of precision protocol, pomp, and pantomime. Allowing for introductions and formalities at the start and end of meetings, interpretation that halves the time, photographing and more, the leaders will have exchanged views for less than four of the nearly nine hours they were together.

These are formal occasions and formal exchanges in the presence of delegations or interpreters, hardly conducive to the establishment of personal relations. It is true that occasionally the personal chemistry between leaders can make a difference. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, for example, clearly liked each other. But they shared a language, both literally and politically, as well as many aspects of culture. The same cannot be said of Xi and Trump – nor of Xi and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

If, as Trump says, at the meeting in Beijing the personal relationship was everything, the free world should be worried. Will anything else emerge from the clouds of hype? Nobody should hold their breath: oxygen can be thin at summits.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Adviser to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Research Fellow in International Security at RUSI.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

This is the 12th Tangram from Observing China, where the leading China experts give a diverse range of succinct responses to key questions on the development of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In mid-May 2026, Donald Trump, President of the United States (US), conducted a highly anticipated state visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), marking the first such visit by a sitting American president since 2017. Characterised by significant pomp and ceremony – including tours of the Temple of Heaven and Zhongnanhai – the summit intended to project a notion of strategic stability.

Yet, beneath the veneers, the geopolitical reality remains complex. The summit occurred against the backdrop of the ongoing US-Israel-Iran conflict, which has severely disrupted global energy markets, alongside continuing friction over trade tariffs, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the status of Taiwan.

Both the US and the PRC have claimed provisional diplomatic success. Washington highlighted immediate economic dividends, including Chinese commitments to purchase American beef, soybeans, and Boeing planes, while simultaneously seeking Beijing’s leverage to help manage the conflict in the Middle East. Conversely, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), utilised the visit to underscore the PRC’s diplomatic parity, explicitly warning against continued US arms sales to Taiwan and seeking to forestall further economic decoupling in the technology sector.

International observers remain divided on whether these tactical agreements signify a genuine bilateral reset or merely a temporary, transactional truce. As such, for this edition of the Tangram, we asked four experts to evaluate the strategic and economic outcomes of the summit, posing the following question: What did Trump achieve in his visit to China?

George Magnus

Member of the Advisory Council of the China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy

Trump arrived in Beijing more or less empty-handed, having already played his now rather compromised tariff cards. Furthermore, he already folded last year when Xi played his own rare earth export control cards. In Beijing, both leaders were after a ‘timeout’ – for however long it lasts, which may not be long – to manage systemic US-PRC conflict rather than resolve it. The same goes for other possible meetings between them this year.

Trump should extricate the US from the ongoing Iran conflict, and focus on improving his own worst ever approval rating, managing the American economy, and bolstering Republican chances in November’s midterm Congressional elections. Xi too needs a stalemate. The Chinese economy is fragile, foreign pushback against the PRC’s huge trade surplus is rising, and the industrial ecosystem heralded in the recently approved 15th Five-Year Plan requires stability at home and abroad, not conflict and tension.

Xi wants ‘strategic stability’, or, less clunkily, managed competition. However, Trump only brought home a problem in this respect. Strategic stability means status quo rules of engagement, and Xi’s insistence that the top issue in US-PRC relations, on which collaboration or conflict hinges, is Taiwan means that Trump has to tread carefully. Indeed, the White House readout did not even refer to it.

After he was home, Trump spoke unclearly about the issue of arms sales and about getting involved in a conflict 9,500 miles away, and he seemed to presume there were ‘negotiables’ – a point which Beijing refutes unequivocally. Trump will either have to accept there are no transactions to be made here, or be shamed into making unilateral concessions.

There were some ‘commercial deliverables’ that the President took home, but as always, only time will tell if substance follows. Beijing committed to purchase more planes, agricultural produce, and energy products. The PRC has accepted proposals to institutionalise very limited amounts of bilateral trade and investment transactions through the Boards of Trade and of Investment. In what looks like an own goal, Trump confirmed earlier approval to allow Nvidia’s H200 chips to be sold to designated Chinese firms, but so far, Beijing has not given its own permission to import them. However, these commercial issues are almost incidental.

On Iran, cyber attacks, nuclear weapons, and other substantial issues, the summit was unremarkable. Likewise, there was little movement on more commercial and economic matters such as export controls, market access, and the global effects of the PRC’s economic model.

Trump got a truce extension on his visit, with lots of photo ops and some trade sweeteners, but also confirmation that rather than being his good pal, Xi is a serious adversary.

Dr Scott Moore

Practice Professor of Political Science, and Director of China Programmes and Strategic Initiatives, University of Pennsylvania

The first thing to say is that it is hard to tell what exactly Trump achieved in his visit to the PRC. This is because there was not only no joint statement or communiqué, but the readouts shared by both sides differed noticeably on key issues.

That being said, each side scored one or two notable accomplishments that bolster their domestic standing. According to American officials, Beijing agreed to some high-profile purchases of agricultural products, satisfying an important domestic constituency for Trump. Xi, for his part, landed a messaging coup by publicly warning the President that refusing to abide by the PRC’s red lines on Taiwan could cause conflict between the two powers – arguably the most provocative thing a Chinese leader has said to an American one in modern history, and one that will doubtless thrill the PRC’s growing ranks of nationalists.

It also should be noted that the initiation of dialogue on AI safety is a very important sign that – against all expectations, in some ways – both sides have not entirely given up on such discussions on shared global challenges and global public goods. While exactly how much this dialogue can accomplish is in doubt, agreeing to talk is an important first step.

Finally, there is one very important thing that the summit did not clearly achieve: stabilisation of a relationship that has been searching for its bottom for years. Certainly, the fact that Trump and Xi have apparently agreed to more meetings suggests that both sides want to avoid further confrontation for the foreseeable future. However, without a real deal on trade and public statements on the fundamental issues in the US-PRC relationship – like Taiwan – the two sides will remain deeply wary rivals.

Laura Bonsaver

Director, London China Watchers, and Taipei-based research consultant

When it comes to Taiwan, what has Trump achieved with his visit to Beijing? The President may have put on a great show, rubbing shoulders with one of the world’s most powerful leaders and returning with a few promises from the PRC to purchase beef, soybeans, and Boeing aircraft. He may also have helped to stabilise relations with Beijing in the short term through his flattery towards Xi.

Yet, this flattery could prove short-lived, and may come at a great cost to Taiwan. The island remains the central sticking point in US-PRC relations, with both sides holding fundamentally incompatible positions.

For the US-Taiwan relationship, one thing that Trump has achieved is stoking concern in Taiwan and across the region. Since the summit, he has shown little effort to demonstrate support for Taipei, referring to Lai Ching-te, President of Taiwan, as ‘the person who is running Taiwan’, and stating that he did not want ‘to have somebody go independent’.

While this language is not entirely dissimilar to previous statements by the US on not supporting Taiwanese independence, Trump’s tone appears to reinforce Beijing’s preferred narrative that Taiwan is the destabilising actor in the Strait while overlooking the PRC’s growing military pressure in the region.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of Taiwanese are not calling for formal independence, but instead support maintaining the status quo, which many, including Lai, already view as de facto independence given that Taiwan operates separately from the CCP government.

Trump has also achieved what many in Taiwan feared: creating the impression that arms sales could depend, at least in part, on Beijing. He stated ‘I’m holding it in abeyance, and it depends on China.’ Despite the ‘Six Assurances’, which state that the US does not need Beijing’s approval for arms sales to Taiwan, his remarks suggest that the timing and scale of arms sales could become tied to broader US-PRC engagement.

The idea of treating arms sales as a negotiating chip would mark a significant shift in American policy. After decades of carefully calibrated Taiwan policy – whereby Washington sought to balance relations with Beijing while supporting Taiwan’s self-defence through cautious language and communiqués – Trump risks undermining that balance.

As for cross-strait relations, Trump may have ultimately heightened tensions rather than easing them. His language may embolden Beijing to increase pressure on Taiwan through both disinformation and military activity, further raising the risk of miscalculation or confrontation in the Taiwan Strait.

At the end of the day, a leader’s rhetoric may still differ from how the US ultimately moves forward. In the coming months, close attention should be paid to how Washington’s approach to Taiwan and arms sales develops.

Dr Andrea Ghiselli

Lecturer in International Relations, University of Exeter, and Head of Research, ChinaMed Project

That American and Chinese priorities differed vastly was evident well before Air Force One landed in Beijing. While the former focused on Iran and on getting the PRC to help achieve a resolution to the ongoing conflict, the latter was all about Taiwan. Unsurprisingly, many observers feared a Faustian bargain, in which Beijing would exert some pressure on Iran in exchange for a change in Washington’s position on Taiwan, especially as Trump has a large arms package on his desk awaiting approval. These fears were made worse by an interview with Fox News, during which Trump warned Taipei not to expect a blank cheque of American military backing if it triggers a war, and accused the island of ‘stealing’ the chip industry from the US.

Yet, it is far from clear that such a bargain is actually on offer.

On the one hand, Beijing wants the conflict to be over, but does not want Iran to be the loser. Its actions fully reflect this. During the summit, all Xi had to offer was opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran and refusal to contradict American claims that Beijing is ‘not in favour of militarising the Straits of Hormuz’ and ‘not in favour of a tolling system.’

The former of these is a longstanding Chinese position. The latter costs Beijing nothing. Following the summit, as Trump was on his way back home, Ambassador Fu Cong, Permanent Representative of the PRC to the United Nations (UN), made clear that his country opposed a new Bahrain-led UN resolution on the Strait of Hormuz calling for an end to Iranian attacks on its Gulf neighbours. In other words, Beijing did not wait even a second to signal that its position had not changed. Whether this reflected confidence, poor coordination, or both does not alter the ultimate message.

On the other hand, among Trump’s unorthodox statements, he also said that he sees arms sales to Taiwan as a ‘very good negotiating chip’. As noted, many interpreted this as a threat to ‘sell’ Taiwan. Yet, if American officials manage to make Trump aware of the substance of the PRC’s position, or if he realises it on his own, that statement is as much a threat to Beijing as it is to Taiwan.

American officials stated that Trump and his team held off on deciding how to proceed with Tehran during his visit to Beijing, and the President’s warning that ‘the clock is ticking’ for Iran is indicative of his frustration with the conflict, possibly made worse by the meeting with Xi.

Ultimately, it remains too early to say whether the Trump-Xi summit produced any sort of breakthrough. Current evidence, however, suggests that it did not.

If you would like to explore any of the Council on Geostrategy’s PRC-focused research papers, click here to visit the China Observatory.

The image at the top of this page has been generated using AI.

Subscribe now

The Investigator | No. 08/2026

In the past decade, the United States (US) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have defined their competitive relationship in various styles. The world got an update on the latest framing of the most important major power competition as Donald Trump, President of the US, wrapped up the first American state visit to the PRC in nine years. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), wants a competition with proper limits, entailing controllable differences and expectable peace, and later emphasised as ‘non-zero-sum’.

Xi summed up the competition as unfolding within a state of constructive strategic stability, allowing the Asian export powerhouse to continue its rising trajectory, with the CCP controlling and minimising ruptures if they are unavoidable. The PRC sets its goals and strategy clearly while preparing to weather interruptions by deploying self-sufficient solutions as well.

A face-to-face meeting – and one full of pomp – between the two leaders, which provides a prime opportunity to influence Trump and even nurture sympathy, is the way to manage US-PRC competition for at least the remaining years of Trump’s tenure. The other two or three occasions for the two leaders to meet in this year will certainly serve the same purpose for the PRC. It is likely that purchases of American Boeing planes, beef, and soybeans may come out, and be fulfilled in phases in order to manage image and draw reciprocity.

In comparison, Trump’s notion of the competition is less clear. During the preceding Biden administration, the ‘small yard, high fence’ approach was the core of the strategy of the competition with the PRC. By contrast, Trump seems to focus on re-shoring, re-industrialisation, and tariff revenues. Yet, after being hit with retaliatory tariffs and export control on rare earths, he was forced to reach a truce in November 2025. His loosening export controls on Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips weakened the ‘high fence’, once core to American strategy.

‘Friendly competition’ is how Trump described it before his departure for the summit. It is probably fair to say that the rare earth card and his lighthearted approach to AI competition helped him to reach the decision to lift export controls on H200 chips manufactured by Nvidia. Trump’s strategy in this competition appears to be to deploy his so-called friendly competition to buy time until his administration’s efforts, along with those of the US’ allies who are also aiming to build alternative rare earth supply chains, can disarm Beijing’s stranglehold.

Some of Trump’s comments on Taiwan also reflect his flawed grasp of the AI competition. Here, Taiwan’s importance as a linchpin is rightly pointed out by American lawmakers and policy analysts, yet remains under-appreciated by the President. Safe to say, the PRC would like it to remain that way.

Downsides of strategic ambiguity in Taiwan policy

According to Trump, Taiwan was a focal topic during the summit. Biden administration officials previously said that Beijing had asked Washington to change its declaratory and arms sales policy towards Taiwan. The lack of depth of Trump’s understanding of the US’ established Taiwan policy worries the Washington policy community and Capitol Hill. While the President has largely adhered to the longstanding approach of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, he seems to leverage decisions on arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining chip, which diverges from Ronald Reagan’s 1982 ‘Six Assurances’.

Although Trump made no commitment on the arms sales issue to Xi, viewing it as a negotiating chip is a non-starter. There should be no deal to be made on Taiwan with Beijing. Suggesting the possibility of a deal undermines the keystone of America’s Taiwan policy, which holds no position on Taiwanese sovereignty or the acceptance of a peaceful resolution agreed by Taipei.

Deploying strategic ambiguity is never easy, and can be an intense job. Trump played his hand better when he deployed it to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, but played it poorly in checking Taiwan by saying the quiet part out loud. He repeatedly described American military aid to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion as a difficult task given the 9,500 miles between the two countries, thus undermining the deterrence provided by American military power. His complaints that Taiwan ‘stole’ the microchip industry and his urging of chipmakers in Taiwan to move to the US further aid insidious American scepticism.

Additionally, although not outright opposition to Taiwanese independence, Trump’s comment of ‘I’m not looking to have somebody go independent’ has drawn media analysis of him warning Taiwan against declaring independence, which could be seen as blaming cross-strait tensions on Taipei rather than on Chinese aggression – which includes Beijing’s refusal to talk to a democratically elected Taiwanese government since 2016, military demonstrations, and showing off the Chinese capability to impose blockades on the island.

To be fair, most of Trump’s talk regarding Taiwan is still within the parameters of strategic ambiguity and, from his perspective, nothing has changed regarding the US’ Taiwan policy. However, as the PRC’s military modernisation generates self-confidence, and distractions intermittently emerging in the Middle East and Europe embolden Beijing’s adventurism in Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, and the East China Sea, the utility of strategic ambiguity has increasingly been questioned.

In other words, America’s double deterrence design requires skilled implementation – if not a complete revamp – to reinforce deterrence power against the main destructive force of the Taiwan Strait. The Taiwanese government, regardless of political party in power, has long held the stance that since the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name) is already an independent country, there is no need to declare independence.

Trump’s learning curve on strategic ambiguity is largely lagging behind the dynamics of the Taiwan Strait, as well as beyond the immediate region. The PRC may well have picked up on this, and will be trying to exploit the situation – as it always does. After falling short of securing complete success at the Beijing summit, and before the American midterm elections in November, Xi will have another face-to-face opportunity to facilitate the play of exchange of favour during a state visit to the US in September. Between now and then, Trump will need to update his command of American Taiwan policy.

Legacy in the time of transformation: Stay on the course of competition

As a second-term president, Trump may seek to establish a personal legacy during his remaining time in the Oval Office. This could be one element in his decision-making regarding a major building project and a deal barring Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Competition with the PRC, however, will undoubtedly be the prominent factor for the foreseeable future.

By invoking the Thucydides Trap – and thus making a thinly veiled threat – Xi implied that Trump should make room for the PRC’s rise in order to avoid conflict. Yielding America’s supreme status or retreating from the US-PRC competition therefore becomes the reluctant, yet necessary, cost of avoiding major power conflict. Instead of accepting this, Trump should stay the course to deter a conflict erupting between the world’s two most powerful nations.

Dr Norah Huang is Director of International Relations and Research Fellow at the Prospect Foundation. Her research focuses on US-PRC relations and US-Taiwan relations.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Analysis? Why not leave a comment below?

The Thinker | No. 04/2026

Whatever the root causes of the controversies surrounding Lord Mandelson’s recent security vetting and diplomatic appointment, His Majesty’s (HM) Government must not miss the broader lesson: a lack of clear strategic thinking regarding the United Kingdom’s (UK) relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to compromise national security.

It is notable that recent public scrutiny of Lord Mandelson’s vetting – and the past PRC-related client roster of Global Counsel, the advisory firm he co-founded, which has entered administration – coincided with a tribunal ruling on the case of Imagination Technologies. Ron Black, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), blew the whistle on an operation to transfer sensitive technology to the PRC, after HM Government had allowed a Chinese venture capital company, Canyon Bridge, backed by a state-owned company, China Reform, to buy Imagination Technologies in 2017.

This is a prime example of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), through its companies – both state-owned and private – sets about filling important gaps in its technology inventory. The threat is not just the acquisition of dual (military) use technologies, but also forcing British, American, and European competitors from the market, thus creating long-term and dangerous dependencies.

The controversial transfer of assets belonging to Imagination Technologies, Britain’s second largest microchip design company, was carried out under the eyes of HM Government. To help navigate the UK’s regulatory and political landscape, Canyon Bridge engaged the services of Global Counsel to reassure British stakeholders and smooth the process.

Details of the Imagination Technologies case are laid out in an excellent report and follow-up article published by UK-China Transparency, an organisation that has exposed a number of instances of CCP interference in Britain. In essence, HM Government allowed Chinese investment in Imagination Technologies on the condition that Intellectual Property (IP) and accompanying know-how remained in the UK. The United States (US) Government had already specifically withheld this technology from the PRC. It had also banned Canyon Bridge from acquiring an American technology company.

Black became worried about what he perceived to be attempts to get around the conditions set for the deal, including using British engineers to train Chinese engineers in the PRC, effectively axing their own jobs, and moving the company and its technology to the PRC. When he concluded that internal argument and resistance were not succeeding, he blew the whistle, was sacked, and launched an employment tribunal case.

When seeking to build influence in British governance, state-backed entities often leverage the legitimate channels established by international businesses and lobbying firms. High-profile advisory firms can find themselves operating at the volatile intersection of corporate advisory and geopolitical risk. The UK’s historically permissive regulatory environment has allowed foreign-backed entities to engage well-connected British consultancies in order to advocate for their interests.

Before its collapse into administration in early 2026, Global Counsel’s client roster is alleged by a British public relations expert (then also advising China Reform) to have included China Reform. Other companies included Wuxi App Tech, a company the US Government claims is a national security risk. As highlighted in Martin Thorley’s All That Glistens: Chinese Party-State Influence in Britain, the methodology by which foreign state interests exploit these legitimate corporate and lobbying channels represents a systemic vulnerability. The CCP does not always need to establish covert channels; it can simply leverage the access provided by existing channels. Any government official working on the PRC who has not read Thorley’s account is remiss.

In sum, the Imagination Technologies story represents a case study in how the CCP sets out to acquire sensitive technology. HM Government should use the case as the basis for reinforcing and drawing up measures which would prevent recurrence.

Lessons and recommendations from the Imagination Technologies acquisition

HM Government should quickly ensure that a working committee – with outside advice and involvement – covers a minimum of seven areas:

1. A clearly articulated strategy for UK-PRC relations: This must set out how to balance (realistically assessed) opportunities against threats to national and economic security. The 2025 ‘China Audit’ provided no clarity within government, business, academia, Parliament, or society. David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, insisted that the contents must remain secret. Since very few civil servants are vetted to secret level, most policymakers remain in the dark. Without overarching guidance, unity of government purpose will continue as a mirage in the Gobi Desert.

2. Establish a centre for countering disinformation and interference: This would ideally be modelled on the lines of the Australian Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator’s office. While it may carry out some activities that are withheld from the public, its default position should be openness. Currently, the Joint State Threats Assessment Team lies buried in the bowels of the Security Service. No one outside HM Government – and few inside – are aware of its existence. It should come out from the shadows.

3. List the PRC on the ‘enhanced’ tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme: Under the National Security Act (NSA), this would hinder illicit CCP attempts to acquire technology and – equally important – the CCP’s aims of exporting its technologies with a view to creating monopolies and dependencies. Linked to this, there should be an obligation for CCP members in Britain to declare this as a conflict of interest when assuming a public position (e.g., at universities, when conducting sensitive scientific research, or in politics). Anyone inclined to doubt the need for this declaration should first read the oath taken by CCP members on joining the party.

4. More rigorous monitoring and implementation of existing legislation: The NSA, National Security Investment Act (NSIA), and the Procurement Act are fine laws, but only to the extent to which they are properly implemented. For example, so far, no Chinese companies have been put on the debarment list under the Procurement Act. Yet, particularly in the field of Cellular (IoT [Internet of Things]) Modules (CIMs), the dangers of allowing Chinese connectivity through CIMs have received increasing publicity. HM Government should carry out a regular, holistic review of measures designed to protect economic and national security. Its next iteration should use the Imagination Technologies acquisition – and the ease with which foreign-backed entities utilised elite British advisory networks – as a baseline for testing the system of defence.

5. Instituting more rigorous oversight of revolving doors: In October 2025, HM Government abolished the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, a largely toothless organisation whose purpose had been to ensure that ministers and officials were not influenced in decision-making by the prospect of being hired at lucrative salaries upon retirement. Under the new system, an Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards will rule on jobs for former ministers, while the Civil Service Commission will do so for senior civil servants. The involvement of high-profile advisory firms in transactions like the Imagination Technologies buyout underscores exactly why strict oversight of this revolving door is needed. So too does the recent scrutiny surrounding diplomatic appointments, such as the request from 10 Downing Street that Matthew Doyle be found an ambassador’s post. Whether the new system is sufficiently strong requires regular evaluation. It may also require underpinning by legislation.

6. Legislation to curb SLAPPs should be tabled urgently: ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’ are an iniquitous practice whereby rich companies and individuals kill knowledge, transparency, and public interest by threatening lawsuits they know they may not win, but which their targets do not have the financial means to defend against. It is increasingly being used by the CCP and its foreign representatives in ways deleterious to national security in free and open nations, especially the UK. Additionally, beyond a Chinese context, the benefits would be broad.

7. An inquiry into the PRC’s use of science and technology as a geopolitical weapon: The CCP is clear that it is in a ‘struggle’ with free and open countries and that the main battlefield is in science and technology. Using the Imagination Technologies acquisition and the corporate mechanisms that facilitated it as case studies, an inquiry should report on necessary measures for protecting Britain’s national and economic security.

Conclusion

It would be wrong to suggest that HM Government has ignored the issues raised here. Compared to the so-called ‘golden era’ of UK-PRC relations and even to more recent times, progress has been made. But too much remains to be done. Technology moves in months, governments in years. That gap must be closed. The CCP system moves in concert; more planned and more consistent. Democracies must speed up their reaction times, but also anticipate and implement prophylactic measures against hostile actors.

Charles Parton OBE is Chief Adviser to the China Observatory at the Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Research Fellow in International Security at RUSI.

To stay up to date with Observing China, please subscribe or pledge your support!

Subscribe now

What do you think about this Analysis? Why not leave a comment below?