The ‘China Audit’ one year on: Clarification, procrastination, or obfuscation?
Part 1: A capable and organised government
The Thinker | No. 06/2026
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):
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 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.
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