How able is Britain to address the ‘sophisticated and persistent’ China challenge as outlined in the Strategic Defence Review?
The Tangram | No 06.2025
This is the sixth 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).
From Beijing’s critical role in supporting and elongating Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to its ‘unprecedented nuclear expansion’, the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published on Monday, did not hold back from presenting how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) works against the interests of the United Kingdom (UK).
But how capable is His Majesty’s (HM) Government of enacting the suggestions made in the SDR on the PRC front? Were there other recommendations which could have been made? We ask four experts to answer.
Research Fellow on Sea Power, Council on Geostrategy
HM Government’s engagement with the PRC needs a proper strategic underpinning. At the moment, the need for Britain to engage with the PRC as an economic behemoth appears to be clashing with the national security side of the coin, and the SDR highlights this. The Review’s (correct) characterisation of the ways in which Beijing is acting stands in contrast to HM Government’s otherwise stated desire to work with the PRC on trade and climate issues.
While it would be both naïve and counterproductive to suggest that the UK should not engage with the PRC, or find ways to cooperate multilaterally on big global issues, the SDR’s exploration of the ongoing Chinese military buildup and Beijing’s increasing belligerence – both regionally and globally – remind us that economic and environmental engagement cannot take place without this backdrop in mind. We will have to wait until HM Government’s ‘China Audit’ is published for a deeper understanding of how this tension will be reconciled going forwards. But, without a broad strategy which stretches across all types of engagement with the PRC, the UK risks scenarios where the military and national security approach to Beijing and the economic and environmental approach to Beijing are not only incompatible but undermine each other, which would be potentially damaging to British interests.
A well thought out and broadly implemented PRC strategy which covers all areas of mutual interest will bring cohesion to HM Government’s engagement across departments. That strategy should start with the national security concerns highlighted in the SDR. The PRC is challenging the interests of the UK and its allies, and no amount of trade deals or climate agreements should be permitted to obscure that fact.
Executive Director, China Strategic Risks Institute
The SDR has much to say about Beijing’s conventional threats, but little on its ‘sub-threshold’ or ‘grey-zone’ capabilities. The PRC’s nuclear expansion and rapidly advancing space capabilities are, of course, deeply concerning long-term challenges which require serious attention. However, so long as direct military confrontation with the PRC seems unlikely in the short term, Beijing’s sub-threshold operations present the more immediate threat.
As it is demonstrating with enthusiasm across the Taiwan Strait, the PRC has a full range of capabilities in its sub-threshold toolkit – from cyber attacks to undersea cable sabotage and disinformation campaigns. Beijing’s willingness to conduct cyber attacks against Britain has been known for some time, with the PRC labelled as the ‘dominant’ hacking threat by UK officials. More recently, the involvement of Chinese ships in a series of suspicious undersea cable breakages in the Baltic Sea has raised concerns about whether the ‘no-limits’ strategic partnership between the PRC and Russia extends to coordinating sub-threshold attacks in Europe. Both Beijing and Moscow increasingly see the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific as a unified security domain, with the two countries staging joint exercises from the South China Sea to near Alaska. The likelihood of the Arctic and Wider North being seasonally ‘ice-free’ by 2040 only exacerbates this challenge.
Further work is needed to secure Britain against the PRC’s sub-threshold threats. The SDR’s proposal to establish a CyberEM Command is a positive step. However, details on undersea infrastructure protection remain scant. Under current laws, the Royal Navy does not even have the authority to detain vessels suspected of damaging undersea infrastructure outside of the UK’s territorial waters. While maritime surveillance infrastructure is well set up to detect conventional threats, identifying suspicious activity among the thousands of commercial vessels passing through Britain’s busy sea lanes every day is far more challenging. Learning from Taiwan – which has developed a range of robust responses to Beijing’s sub-threshold activities – is critical.
Independent Researcher
The SDR identifies the PRC as a ‘sophisticated and persistent challenge.’ While it appears to be more measured than terminologies such as ‘threat’ or ‘adversary’ – both of which are applied elsewhere in the document – the SDR nonetheless sensibly signals a serious appraisal of the risks posed by the PRC to the UK’s national interests, in which the PRC’s growing alignment with Russia (an ‘immediate and pressing threat’ to Britain) is among the top concerns.
Such recognition is critical, especially when HM Government is navigating an increasingly complex and contested global landscape. However, a gap remains between this strategic assessment and domestic policy posture. While the UK’s trade with the PRC is modest compared to that with Euro-Atlantic partners, the PRC retains considerable leverage in the British economy. State-linked Chinese entities continue to hold stakes in critical infrastructure, and Chinese technologies are deeply embedded in the UK’s energy and transport systems, raising legitimate concerns about dependency, supply chain resilience and cybersecurity.
Furthermore, Britain hosts the highest number of Confucius Institutes globally, despite sustained criticism that these institutions function as instruments of state-backed influence. While the SDR underscores growing coordination among the PRC, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, Chinese organisations remain outside the ‘Enhanced Tier’ of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS). In contrast, Russia and Iran are already designated under this more restrictive category, allowing PRC-affiliated actors comparatively greater latitude to engage in political activities within the UK.
Diplomatic engagement presents additional contradictions. The resumption of UK–PRC strategic and economic dialogues earlier this year, and the expected approval of a new Chinese embassy in London, alongside the plan to revive the UK-China Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO), risk sending mixed signals in contrast to the SDR’s more cautious stance.
Resolving these inconsistencies will require a more coherent, cross-government approach. The forthcoming ‘China Audit’ presents a timely opportunity to align departmental perspectives and policy instruments. Both the country’s Indo-Pacific engagements and the significant Hong Kong diaspora communities, many of whom resettled in Britain following the PRC’s crackdown on the city’s democratic movement, present an asset to HM Government’s work towards a more consistent and integrated China policy across defence, domestic resilience, education and economic strategy.
Fellow, Yorktown Institute
This year’s SDR presented in more clarity than previous years how the PRC is actively working against British interests, from its role in supporting and extending Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to the long-term challenge of its ‘unprecedented’ nuclear expansion’.
The PRC’s military support to Russia has enabled the war machine of Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, to continue unabated: 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports come from the PRC. Beijing also exports more than $300 million (£221 million) worth of dual-use items to Russia each month, and is also widely suspected of providing satellite intelligence to the Russian military.
The SDR could have mentioned how the UK can counter both the PRC’s continued disregard for international sanctions against Russia, and how to regain diplomatic support from countries seeking closer alignment with the evolving alliance between Moscow and Beijing.
Also, while Beijing continues to challenge strategic stability and nuclear non-proliferation, allied assurance will become more complicated. The SDR correctly identifies that Britain should work closer with the United States (US) to maximise the relationship’s potential as a force multiplier to combat the challenges which the PRC poses in the Indo-Pacific.
The SDR also correctly identified that the UK must leverage its network of allies and its overseas bases, particularly connecting the Euro-Atlantic with key partners across the Indo-Pacific. Recent deployments with the Five Power Defence Arrangement is a great start.
Regrettably, however, uncertainty remains regarding the Chagos Archipelago deal with Mauritius (which holds close relations with the PRC), especially concerning the access to the electromagnetic spectrum of the military base on the island of Diego Garcia. Britain’s handover of the Chagos Archipelago threatens to undermine the SDR’s aspiration to leverage overseas bases.
Ultimately, given the limited, increasingly burdened, and now post-2029 uncertain spending envelope, the UK may struggle to develop a genuinely credible ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) First’ military while simultaneously acting as a force multiplier to the US in renewing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Achieving both ambitions will require a firmer commitment of spending levels into the next decade.
Grace Theodoulou – Policy Fellow, China Observatory
Email: grace@geostrategy.org.uk
If you would like to explore any of the Council on Geostrategy’s PRC-focused research papers, click here to visit the China Observatory.