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Cold war mentality will damage Britain’s science superpower dream

It is not in Britain’s interests to be continually ratcheting up tensions with China, writes Dr PING HUA

IN 2022, the British government underwent frequent changes but its policy towards China remained as tough and hostile as ever.  

Rishi Sunak, the current British PM, at the Bali G20 meeting in November 2022 accused China of being a systemic challenge to British values and interest and the biggest threat to Britain’s economic security.  

Yes, China’s social, economic and political model are different from those of  Britain’s, but the whole process of the people’s democracy practised in China is based on the country’s reality, history and culture, and it reflects the will of the people.  

While Britain and the US practice capitalism, China practices socialism. Such difference is nothing new and will continue to exist. 

The leadership of the Communist Party of China and China’s socialist system has the support of the majority of its 1.4 billion people.  

They are the fundamental guarantee for China’s development and stability. China’s social, economic and political model has delivered in the short period of 40 years enormous benefits to the Chinese people, more than any period in China’s history. 

China has also become the world’s second-largest economy in GDP terms, and the largest economy in GDP based on purchasing power parity terms, which benefits not only China, but also its trade partners which do business with China including the US and Britain. 

It is neither logical nor rational to see a country as a “systematic challenge” simply because it has a different culture.  

Nature is colourful because it has a great variety of landscape, great variety of species of plants and animals. Likewise, the human society is colourful because there are a great variety of ethnicities and their cultures, including their traditions and their political systems. If one culture is not tolerated by another, conflicts may arise.  

Historically China is a peaceful country. In the past 40 years or so, China has not engaged in any wars with another country nor has it tried to impose its will or its social, economic and political model on another country.  

On the contrary, the West, especially the US and its allies, unleashed numerous wars against many other countries in the same period and caused massive and prolonged suffering to millions of people.

In order to maintain global hegemony, the US believes it must contain the development of China by any means, therefore with its allies the US has carried out all-round containment and suppression against China, including launching trade war, high-tech war, propaganda war, cold war, and is even preparing for a hot war, under the name of so-called defending human rights, academic freedom, national security and maintaining the international order.  

For the sake of loyalty to Uncle Sam, the British government is acting as the vanguard of the anti-China movement. 

Britain has continued to interfere into China’s domestic affairs using double standards, issuing irresponsible statements and engaging in improper actions on matters related to Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan. 

Due to a lack of high-level communications between Beijing and London, people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two countries have been hampered.  

Downing Street has forcibly intervened in the economic co-operation on national security grounds. This has affected normal co-operation between China and Britain in the areas of trade, investment, and science and technology, and has caused discontent among the British population.

The British higher education system is also bound to suffer as a result. Over 1,000 scientists and students from China were rejected to work or study in UK last year compared to 128 in 2020 and only 13 in 2016, according to The Guardian.

Major research centres are being shut down, Chinese researchers forced to leave the UK as FBI and MI5 leaders give an unprecedented joint warning on so-called “Chinese spying.”  

The Academic Technology Approval Scheme introduced by the Foreign Office since 2007 requires those from countries subject to immigration control to apply for clearance to work on so-called dual-use research and other “sensitive” subjects which has been expanded in 2020 to cover not just “weapons of mass destruction,” but also all advanced conventional technologies that are deemed to have potential military use. 

This in practice covers much of physics, engineering and computer science. It was further expanded in 2021 to cover researchers, as well as postgraduate students.

Some of our postgraduate students who have already paid tuition fees, are becoming victims of such a lengthy clearance process.  

Leading scientists say the scheme is leaving universities struggling to recruit the best talent from abroad.  

Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, the principal and vice-chancellor of Edinburgh University, said lengthy delays and the “blanket” fashion in which vetting was being applied meant the process was “becoming a roadblock.

“Research projects are being delayed, attempts to recruit staff are being delayed and we don’t think it’s in anybody’s interests for that to be the case. It’s a significant issue.”

Some MPs within our government have been doing their upmost to play up the “China threat theory,” blaming Britain’s own problems on Chinese interference and using this as a means to defuse Britain’s social crisis and deflect domestic tensions caused by the pandemic and Brexit in recent years.  

Advocates of the “China threat theory” accuse China of “trying to infiltrate and subvert the British political system,” of seeking to influence British parliamentarians through engaging in “political meddling activities” and of trying to change the rules of the game. 

The fact is that Britain is building up its armaments and is part of the anti-China Aukus pact, reshaping the existing international system and attempting to turn the trend towards globalisation and international co-operation into a situation of confrontation between “us and them,” even at the cost of diminishing its own “science superpower” dreams.   

Finally, the world we live in is currently in turmoil, local and regional conflicts occur frequently, and the world’s economy needs to recover and climate change needs to be dealt with urgently.  

Therefore we need consensus and co-operation and, most importantly, a peaceful environment. China firmly pursues a strategy of mutual benefit and win-win co-operation. 

China says so and does so. China was the country that mediated the reconciliation talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia while the US has been pressuring Saudi Arabia for years to wage war on Iran.  

China is also trying to mediate peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal admitted that the US is trying to sabotage China’s attempt to have peace talks — the article titled “US seeks to head off any Chinese call for ceasefire in Ukraine” truly exposed that this is a US and Nato proxy war aiming to weaken Russia.  

On March 23, the US Congress approved a record defence budget of $842 billion to prepare for conflict with China. Let’s face the reality, who is the real threat to the world peace? The facts speaks out loud and clear.  

Dr Ping Hua is an academic at the University of Southampton and from the No Cold War Britain campaign.  

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