DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Keir Starmer must remember that China is not a friend
In this volatile and dangerous world, it’s important we know who our friends are.
Not false or transient friends, who offer amity when it suits their purpose, only to stab us in the back when it doesn’t. But tried and tested friends, who share our belief in freedom and democracy.
Friends who have stood beside us in some of our darkest days.
China emphatically does not fall into this category. It is a brutal, Orwellian surveillance state which oppresses its own people and is engaged in a bid for global domination.
At home, dissidents are ruthlessly suppressed, religious minorities persecuted and millions effectively enslaved. Abroad, Chinese agents are sent to this and other Western countries to infiltrate governments and institutions and steal scientific, technical and industrial secrets.
As well as threatening its near neighbours and buying up much of the developing world with its ‘Belt and Road’ policy, Beijing is also widening its diplomatic arc. It has moved significantly closer to Moscow in recent times and describes Iran as ‘a good friend and partner’.
Little wonder that former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger has warned we must ‘wake up’ and realise the huge scale of the threat. China is not to be trusted, he said.
What then are we to make of Sir Keir Starmer’s meeting yesterday with Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, with which he hopes to open a new era of cooperation.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday
Sir Keir Starmer has expressed his wishes to improve relationships both economically and politically with China
Foreign Secretary David Lammy also met his Chinese counter part Wang Yi in Brazil on Monday
It’s certainly a remarkable turnaround from 2021 when, as opposition leader, he called for China’s persecution of its Uyghur Muslims to be branded ‘genocide’ and for bilateral trade deals to be blocked.
Yet now he says: ‘China’s economy is the second biggest in the world. It is very important that we have a pragmatic and serious relationship. We are both global players, global powers.’
Does he really believe president Xi regards the UK as a major global power or Sir Keir as an equal? Only the US is even in the same league and any overtures China makes to Sir Keir will be at least partly aimed at weakening UK/US relations.
China and America could be about to engage in a trade war. If that happens, Sir Keir must be very clear which side he is on. He and his party may despise President-elect Trump and oppose the tariffs he is threatening, but cosying up to Beijing is a dangerous strategy.
China is the second biggest economy in the world, but the US remains the biggest. It is also a vibrant democracy and staunch ally over more than a century.
His rapprochement with Beijing could also have implications for the Ukraine war, which reaches the grim milestone of its 1,000th day today. China’s support has emboldened Vladimir Putin, and its ally North Korea supplies him with both materiel and soldiers.
After a few months trotting around the world, the PM clearly fancies himself as an international statesman. Compared to president Xi, however, he is a rank amateur.
When asked in 1972 whether the French Revolution had been a success, the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai reputedly replied: ‘It’s too early to say.’
The story may be apocryphal, but it speaks of a nation adept at playing the long political game. To China, Sir Keir is merely a pawn on its board.
Yes, we must trade with China. But it does not share our values, and it is not our friend. We forget that at our peril.
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