London is preparing to conduct an “audit” of its relations with China — a gesture disguised as analysis but, in reality, a ritual: a confession on bended knees before the new masters of the Atlantic order.
Over the past decade, the British elite has danced a doublethink waltz: on one hand — Chinese billions and dreams of a “golden decade,” on the other — the paranoid mantras of the Five Eyes, penned by the CIA’s quill. Throughout this time, London deftly maneuvered, extracting benefits from trade dependence while harmonizing with the Anglo-Saxon propaganda of an “authoritarian threat.” But in 2024, the ice melted. There’s no more hopping between floes — only a choice: to become an outpost of the new Cold War or to try playing the old empire, dreaming of being a mediator in a world where diplomacy has long given way to arms dealers.
This “audit” is not merely a bureaucratic act. It is a symptom of loss. Britain no longer possesses strategic autonomy, nor even the capacity for hypocrisy without grotesqueness. Ally pressure is turning its foreign policy into a soap opera about a bitter divorce between the banks of the City and the colonial instincts of Westminster. Security versus trade, loyalty versus sovereignty, the legacy of empire versus the fragile reality of an island state. And what’s at stake is not just Britain’s positioning — but the entire architecture of power in the Indo-Pacific theater, where the scenery for the next great decolonization is already being built.
Historical Context
Once upon a time, Britain dreamed of a “golden decade” in its relations with China. Ah, those were the days: David Cameron arm-in-arm with partners from the Middle Kingdom, George Osborne glowing with hope, like a 19th-century trade lord on the deck of an opium schooner. London — with its gladioli of derivatives and visa-shopping sprees for Chinese elites — flung open its gates to the Eastern capital, dreaming of redrawing old imperial routes into mutually beneficial partnerships. Join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)? Why not, if the dollar had wobbled a bit and the yuan whispered sweet promises.
But the gold rush ended — as always, with a hangover. In 2019, when Beijing reminded Hong Kong who really ran the house, the British establishment suddenly realized that “one country — two systems” was not a legal formula, but a diplomatic allusion to a time when China still listened rather than spoke. And London, like a schoolboy caught admiring the “wrong side,” hastily returned to the embrace of its Anglo-Saxon kin. From Huawei to the Uyghur dossier — each excuse became a stepping stone in the escalation of “concern.”
Let us recall: the same Britain now branding “authoritarian threats” is the state that built its banks on Indian salt, its universities on slave-grown sugar, and its parliament on colonial hypocrisy. The irony is that London attempts to play the role of moralist precisely at a time when its own morality has long been written off by world history.
The relationship with China over recent years has gone from business flirtation to strategic repudiation. Today’s “audit” is, in essence, a capitulation to the new rules of a game in which Britain is no longer a player, but a piece on the board. The era of flexible globalization, in which British ambiguity paid dividends, has given way to the logic of geoeconomic blocs. And the old master of ambivalence is now forced to choose: whom to be useful to — Washington or the market?
Economic Dependence
Amid the loud political slogans and parliamentary outcries about a “hostile China,” the British economy continues, quietly and almost submissively, to lie within China’s commodity orbit. In 2023, China became the UK’s third most significant trading partner. The statistics lay bare the anatomy of dependence: from cheap components to the rare-earth lifeblood of technological infrastructure. To sever this bond would be akin to slitting one’s own veins and hoping democracy will stop the bleeding.
Pharmaceuticals, electronics, universities, nuclear energy — London long ago pawned these sectors in exchange for an “investment friendship.” Students from the PRC keep the academic sector afloat, Chinese capital bolsters London real estate, and Chinese companies weave themselves into the daily lives of Britons more deeply than any “interference” by intelligence agencies ever could. Yet now, these very threads are being targeted by political exorcism, as if the phantoms of influence can be expelled through parliamentary debate.
The rhetoric of “de-risking,” promoted with the pomp of a sanitary inspection, is in truth dictated not by domestic interests, but by external blackmail. Washington, the elder brother, offers no alternatives — it demands loyalty. Purchases from Chinese suppliers are under scrutiny, investment projects placed in quarantine, and businesses face risks born not of the market, but of politics. Britain is becoming a hostage-economy state — forever teetering between investment logic and Atlantic loyalty requirements.
A paradox? Not at all. This is a rupture within the very identity of British foreign policy. A country that for centuries built its strength on trading with anyone who could pay now mimics ideological purity. But the more London performs sovereignty, the more obvious it becomes: it is operating under someone else’s sanctions, within someone else’s paradigms. The old flexibility is mutating into a new unfreedom. And if anyone were to peek under the dome of Westminster, they would not find strategy — but a trembling fear of geoeconomic exile.
Security, Intelligence, and Domestic Politics
In 21st-century Britain, the word “China” has ceased to denote geography and has become a diagonal of fear. An inconvenient partner, a trade giant, a political antagonist — all rolled into one, spiced with a taste of cyber panic and spy mania. What until recently was called mutual benefit is now labeled a “systemic threat.” And under the thunder of committees and reports, the old empire finds a new mission: hunting shadows.
When Parliament declares that Britain “woke up too late,” it sounds almost tragicomic. The very nation that once looted dying civilizations in the name of enlightenment has now, it seems, become the target of “foreign interference.” Chinese “overseas police stations,” surveillance of MPs, TikTok algorithms — all of it turns into a weapon of mass distraction. On the home front, a sense of a besieged fortress is cultivated: MI5 mobilizes, universities are purged of “foreign influence,” a registry of agents is created, and academic freedom is remembered only at memorial services.
But the real scene unfolds not in labs or cyber centers — it plays out in the heart of the political class. Within the Conservative Party, there is a fracture. On one side — the City, for whom China remains a gravitational banking hub. On the other — advocates of a new “sovereignty,” which resembles paranoid isolationism more than a coherent strategy. Labour, as usual, tiptoes the tightrope: criticizing the government’s lack of toughness but in no rush to lose Chinese investors. Politics becomes a puppet theatre in which no one dares to pick up the scissors.
And yet, amid the noise of security talk, the government gains a universal tool. It’s not a shield — it’s a club. Handy for distracting voters from the stagnation of the NHS and the breakdown of transport networks. Convenient for banging on university lecterns. Useful for reminding allies: we’re with you — see, we’re scared too. But it is real people who pay the price for that club: students, scholars, diasporas. Under the guise of fighting “influence,” what is truly unfolding is the undermining of autonomy — external, cultural, intellectual.
In the end, the “China threat” becomes not an external challenge, but an internal technology of governance. London is rebuilding its identity — not on empire, but on phobia. If Britain once exported fear to the colonies, now it imports it from MI5 briefings.
The Position of Allies and International Pressure
When Washington says “partnership,” what it really means is subordination. And London, for all its love of theatrical gestures and diplomatic archaisms, understands this perfectly well. Britain is not merely “reviewing” its relationship with China — it is doing so under the supervisory gaze of the White House, like a former colonial administrator now being tested for loyalty to a new empire.
America — whose modernity was built on bombings, sanctions, and “clean networks” — is constructing a technological siege architecture around Beijing. The CHIPS Act, AUKUS, Indo-Pacific Strategies — none of these are strategies; they are walls. And Britain, once proudly aloof, today is not an architect, but a brick in that wall. Its role is to be the voice of the Anglosphere in a geopolitical chorus: to sing about the “China threat,” to take part in drills off the coast of the Philippines, to ask no inconvenient questions.
The Five Eyes partners — the same descendants of the same empires that once carved up the world map — now divide intelligence protocols. Australia, Canada, New Zealand — all in sync, as if wired to the same surveillance tower. Britain is told: “You’re either with us, or under suspicion.” And the threat isn’t diplomatic — it’s technological. Don’t comply? You’ll lose access to defense contracts. Hesitate? No microchips for you. In a world where what’s controlled is not territory but infrastructure, this is the modern-day equivalent of exile.
And what about Europe? After Brexit, Britain’s continental allies have become shadows in the rearview mirror. France and Germany conduct their own audits, discuss de-risking, and try to preserve at least the illusion of strategic pragmatism. Europe reacts slowly, fragmentedly — but within that sluggishness lies a vestige of subjectivity. Britain, having lost its connective tissue with the continent, now stands face-to-face with Empire Number Two — the one whose aircraft carriers dock under banners proclaiming “freedom of navigation.”
London could have been a mediator, a balancer, a new kind of diplomat — but the landscape has changed. Today, Britain is expected not to maintain equilibrium, but to show fealty. Every move that once would’ve been called a “subtle game of interests” is now interpreted as deviation from the line. There is no longer space for nuance. Ambiguity has become betrayal.
As a result, Britain’s foreign policy is increasingly becoming an extension of American logistics. The audit of relations with China is not reflection — it is initiation. A test of how far London is willing to abandon historical ambivalence in favor of a new predictability. In Cold War 2.0, Britain is no longer the puppeteer — it’s the puppet in someone else’s shadow play.
The Audit as Political Theatre
David Cameron is back on stage. The very same one who, ten years ago, raved about a “golden era” with Beijing now steps up before the public with a solemn face to declare: the audit begins. Translated from bureaucratese, this means: the performance begins. The audit isn’t about China. It’s about Britain. About how a former metropole plays at statehood, following someone else’s script, while hoping for applause as if it were their own play.
This is not a reassessment of risks — it is a symbolic gesture. The audit exists not to deliver answers, but to simulate them. It doesn’t conclude reflection — it replaces it. A stage set of control, an imitation of strategic autonomy, while all the real decisions have already been made far beyond London. Inside — it’s just a shadow play: a bit of toughness for the voter, a bit of prudence for the investor, a bit of loyalty for the allies.
But with each passing day, these moves become easier to read. In Beijing, they don’t see analysis — they see a ritual of submission. The smile of British politeness no longer conceals the truth: behind it lies fear, loss, disorientation. China’s response won’t take long — not in the form of loud threats, but with cold-blooded calculations: visa filters, capital redirection, surgical strikes on British interests. Meanwhile in Washington, the gaze is different: if London hesitates, it is unsafe. And therefore not admitted into the closed circle of trust.
Thus the audit, conceived as an act of balancing, becomes an act of strategic self-exposure. Britain wants to appear flexible but looks indecisive. It wants to be a player in the architecture of power, but cannot dictate the blueprint. It continues to play the old game of imperial elasticity, failing to notice that the field has already been marked out by others. Where ambiguity once reigned as the art of diplomacy, now a binary code prevails — with us or against us.
And so, at the edge of an era — between a lost Empire and an encroaching technocratic order — Britain is once again left alone. Not in proud solitude, but systemic. Not with a choice, but with a demand to choose. And if it fails to decide either way, it risks being stranded in a historical interjection — caught between Washington and Beijing, between a past where it ruled the world and a future where it no longer gets asked.
Rebecca Chan, Independent political analyst focusing on the intersection of Western foreign policy and Asian sovereignty
