In Post-Brexit Britain, Conservative Lawmakers Start to Focus on China - The Wall Street Journal

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Conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat chairs the China Research Group, whose influence in British politics is building.

Photo: Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

By

Max Colchester

• Biography
• @MaximColch
• Max.Colchester@wsj.com

Aug. 9, 2020 12:19 pm ET

LONDON—After helping to secure the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, lawmakers from Britain’s ruling Conservative Party are coalescing around a new target: China.

The China Research Group, a loosely defined caucus of Conservative lawmakers, has emerged in the past six months as a new force in British politics, helping push Britain’s government to take a harder line on China. The group has held just a couple of events and is in the process of hiring its first researcher but already it claimed its first win when the government last month banned the purchase of advanced telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies Co.

“I hope China will see it for what it is,” says China Research Group Chairman Tom Tugendhat. “We have specific interests and we intend to defend them.”

The CRG mailing list has swollen to around 100 of the 364 Conservative lawmakers in the 650-seat House of Commons, a number large enough for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to want to avoid provoking them to rebellion.

The CRG’s rise comes as Mr. Johnson looks to redefine the U.K.’s role on the global stage after Brexit. The U.K.’s protracted departure from the EU, which was finalized in January, distracted the government from other foreign-policy issues.

Brexit, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, has prompted a rethink of the country’s traditionally hands-off approach to foreign investment, in particular from China. “Brexit brings foreign policy as a whole into sharp focus,” says Damian Green, a Conservative lawmaker and CRG member.

Conservative lawmaker Damian Green, seen last year, is helping to move the China Research Group forward.

Photo: Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The group’s growth has been spurred by concerns about China’s handling of Covid-19, its imposition of a new security law on the former British colony of Hong Kong and its crackdown on the Uighur people in northwestern China.

Britain’s relationship with China has been volatile. In 2012, then British Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama, damaging relations with China. The British government then moved to reconcile with Beijing, announcing a “golden era” of trade with the country that crested when Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mr. Cameron shared a pint of beer in an English pub in 2015.

When Mr. Johnson took over as prime minister in July 2019, it seemed like Britain’s relations with China would continue largely unchanged.

In an interview with a Chinese publication shortly before becoming prime minister, Mr. Johnson said he was “very pro-China” and that Britain was “the most open economy in Europe” for Chinese investments. Within months, his government gave the green light for Huawei to keep building some of the country’s 5G telecom network.

Last month, the government announced a reversal of that policy. The government said the U-turn was due to new U.S. sanctions that were slapped on the Chinese company. However, Mr. Johnson also was facing a vocal revolt over the issue led by CRG members.

After Huawei, the group is now turning its attention to Chinese funding of British universities and investment in the country’s nuclear-energy sector. A Chinese state company, China General Nuclear Power Corp., is planning to build a reactor in the U.K. and top British universities are heavily reliant on funding from Chinese students.

Chinese students provide just under half of top British universities’ foreign tuition fees, according to Onward, a think tank. That leaves the institutions vulnerable to any edict from Beijing to reduce their numbers.

The British government is wary of getting into an economic struggle with China just as it distances itself from the EU and looks to build economic and political ties elsewhere. For instance, it so far has held off from sanctioning top Chinese officials. However, Mr. Johnson also wants to avoid rolling rebellions in his own party.

The CRG’s membership overlaps significantly with that of the European Research Group, a band of mostly right-leaning members of Parliament, who worked tirelessly to get Britain out of the EU and want an arm’s-length future economic relationship with the bloc.

The CRG’s views on China are less clearly defined than the ERG’s are on Europe and the group is more amorphous. The lawmakers signed up include centrists, ex-soldiers and Atlanticists—together with a handful who were newly elected in Mr. Johnson’s decisive victory in December’s general election. Many in the main opposition Labour Party also support its aims.

The group worries about China’s growing influence on the U.K. and what would happen if it is left unchecked. Some members also argue that Britain could itself learn from China’s industrial policy. Mr. Tugendhat, a former British Army officer and chairman of the House of Commons foreign-affairs committee, says that his main goal isn’t “to beat up the government” but to shine a light on how China works. “The point is pretty simple,” he says. “It is to make sure we have a better understanding of what China is doing globally.”

The British government and political class lack China expertise, says Yu Jie, a senior research fellow on China at the think tank Chatham House, which puts it at a disadvantage vis-à-vis Beijing. “What I find striking is the majority of [CRG] members haven’t been to China in recent years,” she says. Furthermore, Britain’s approach to China will be more influenced by the U.S. than a caucus of British lawmakers, she adds.

The CRG members agree that Britain is playing catch-up with countries such as the U.S. and Australia when it comes to its approach to China. “Other countries that have been thinking about China are a little bit ahead of us,” says Neil O’Brien, a lawmaker who helped form the group.

The Chinese ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, tweeted recently that Britain was to blame for worsening relations between the countries. “China has not changed, it is the U.K. that has changed,” he wrote.

Unease among Conservative lawmakers about what they see as China’s increasingly aggressive policies has been brewing for some time. In 2018, Mr. Tugendhat, who previously supported the government’s dovish stance on China, says he was affronted when the Chinese government sought to dictate who on his committee should be allowed to visit Beijing for a research trip.

In March of this year, a number of Conservative lawmakers including Mr. Tugendhat rebelled against the government’s law allowing Huawei to build a portion of the U.K.’s 5G network. By April, the CRG was formed. Covid-19 stopped the group from meeting but it has held online seminars with the Japanese defense minister and Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong. Several members also met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a recent trip to London.

The debates around Huawei proved a catalyst to look into how Chinese entities had permeated British industry. Covid-19 exposed a shortage of medical protective equipment in the U.K., highlighting how reliant supply chains are on China. The British government is reviewing these supply chains.

When China announced a tough new security law would be imposed on Hong Kong, the British government reacted by making it easier for some three million Hong Kongers to settle in the U.K.

Some in the group talk of using Britain’s diplomatic muscle to form a more coherent Western response to China. “We need an international coalition,” says Mr. Green. “Britain is in a good place to pull this together.”

The British government said it will ban wireless carriers in the country from buying new Huawei equipment and require the Chinese company to remove its technology from U.K.’s 5G networks by 2027. WSJ’s Stu Woo explains the significance. Photo: Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Write to Max Colchester at max.colchester@wsj.com

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