CRG Weekly: National security, Biden-Xi summit, Peng Shuai
National Security and Chinese surveillance suppliers
China’s Politburo, the central decision-making body of the Communist Party, held a meeting this week to review the country’s National Security Strategy for the next five years. At the meeting presided over by Xi Jinping, the Politburo highlighted the need to take a holistic approach to national security and called for speeding up the construction of a new national security architecture.
Since 2014, the CCP has termed its security strategy in official documents as ‘Comprehensive National Security’, indicating synergy between broad economic and military development goals. As Bill Bishop commented in Sinocism this week: “everything is National Security in Xi’s China.”
Xi named eleven different aspects in China’s security concept, emphasising a need to develop key technologies to modernise the country’s industry, national economy, and social communication infrastructure - but also its security apparatus. This new national security purpose was codified through Made in China 2025, a central economic and technological planning document that enables Beijing to subsume future technologies under the guiding principles of national security and ‘civil-military fusion’.
Poring over the 2021-2025 National Security Strategy this week, Xi stressed that the Party should make national security its top priority. The holistic approach to national security submitted by the Politburo is not new, although there appeared to be an extra emphasis placed on safeguarding China from political and ideological threats. It is perhaps revealing that the terms “science and technology” and “overseas interests” are deployed throughout the documents.
The CCP is placing ever-larger areas of government, economic, and social action under this broad concept of national security. Given internal security has become inseparable from external security for Beijing, there is a need for the UK to understand and follow this concept as it evolves and impacts British interests.
Take surveillance technology. According to a TOP10VPN report from this week, the UK has the fourth-highest number of Hikvision and Dahua camera surveillance networks in the world, and home to 15% of all Dahua and Hikvision networks in Europe. This data comes only months following the discovery - through Freedom of Information requests conducted by the China Research Group - that English councils have procured more than £1 million worth of Hikvision equipment between 2019 and 2021.
English councils have already complained that the dominance of Hikvision in the CCTV market has made it difficult to divest, with some saying it is priced below the market rate. Given the importance of CCTV to policing, that raises questions about dependence in critical infrastructure.
But, more importantly, Hikvision and Dahua’s association with ‘internal security’ in Xinjiang has been well-documented by IPVM, a leading video surveillance organisation. IPVM found that Hikvision and Dahua have won well over $1 billion worth of government-backed surveillance projects in Xinjiang since 2016. In October 2019, both companies were added to the US Department of Commerce’s ‘Entity List.’
By contrast, the UK has been slower to act. In a report published in July, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) advised that both companies should not be permitted to operate in the UK due to their role in facilitating the internment of ethnic minority citizens in Xinjiang through racial profiling technology.
Yet in the past two weeks, the UK government rejected the recommendation to ban Hikvision and Dahua. The FCDO response to the FAC report revealed it is working on new guidance that would support UK government agencies to exclude suppliers where there is ‘sufficient evidence’ of human rights violations in their supply chains. But the Home Office has also rejected the insertion of a 'human rights clause' in the Surveillance Camera Code, which would have required the public sector to consider human rights in procurement.
China’s economic and technological rise is increasingly visible abroad, both through acquisitions and growing market shares for Chinese technology giants in critical industries. Yet uneasy links to national security - Hikvision and Dahua both have direct links to the CCP, with the former being 42% owned by Chinese state investors - raise serious challenges for our adoption of such technology.
In brief
Boris Johnson is reported to be considering a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year. In response to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report, the UK government refused to declare the situation in Xinjiang as genocide and rejected wider bans on goods from the region.
New research by Sheffield Hallam University’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice revealed that more than 100 global retail brands could still be at risk of using cotton that is produced by Uyghur forced labour. Meanwhile, Exeter University was urged by students to cut ties with Tsinghua University for employing academics considered the “ideological architects” of the oppression of Uyghurs.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping engaged in a 3 hour ‘healthy debate’ during their first virtual summit, signalling cooperation in areas such as nuclear proliferation, restrictions on journalists, and military dialogue.
Chinese state media outlet CGTN released an email purporting to be from tennis star Peng Shuai, who has been missing for two weeks after making sexual assault allegations against a former government official. Women’s Tennis Association chairman Steve Simon said the message "only raises" concerns, and that the WTA is prepared to pull its China tournaments. Leading athletes Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, and Andy Murray showed solidarity with Peng on social media.
Angela Merkel admitted that Germany may have been naive on China at first, but it should not sever all connections despite growing tensions. A new report from MERICS shows how China has expanded its ties in Europe at a subnational level, bypassing EU institutions and national governments to increase influence and advance its strategic interests.
Taiwan opened a de facto embassy in Lithuania on Thursday, angering Beijing. Reuters reported that the Baltic nation will sign a $600 million export credit agreement with the U.S. Export-Import Bank next week. Meanwhile, the EU announced it is postponing the announcement of a new strategic format for liaising with Taiwan on trade and economic issues.
Research from the Center for Global Development showed that with over $66 billion in total capital, China has become the second-largest contributor to the system of development banks providing subsidised loans to the Global South.
China’s nomination for an Interpol oversight position, Hu Binchen, was opposed by 50 legislators from 20 countries. The wife of the disappeared former president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, also denounced the CCP for arbitrary detentions this week.
China’s semiconductor output dropped again, signalling bottlenecks amid a global chip shortage. Richard Chang Rugin, the founder of chip maker SMIC, said that a talent shortage poses the biggest obstacle to Beijing’s chip self-sufficiency ambitions.
China’s State Council approved plans to digitalise government services.
Weekend reads
China’s hypersonic missile test does not change the nuclear calculus. Ananmay Agarwal and Ryan J A Harden. RUSI, 18 November
China’s search for allies. Is Beijing building a network of its own? Patricia M. Kim. Foreign Affairs, 15 November
Big Tech can see a future where the nation state is no longer the master. Ian Bremmer. The Times, 19 November
Podcasts
Where is China Heading? Cindy Yu in this week’s Talking Politics.
China tackles its tech titans. Rui Ma and Graham Webster on Asia Matters.