Ep 4. Can Britain still do business with China?

Zoe: Two weeks ago we looked at the story of British and Russian relations, how at one point the future appeared bright, full of potential for partnership and trust, and how quickly those dreams or delusions were shattered. Now I'm not about to draw a complete parallel with the UK's relationship with China. It's a totally different relationship with a totally different history. But there is one similarity that feeling, that high peak of ambition, and how fast that vision fell to disillusionment. In twenty fifteen, the UK's Chancellor George Osborne declared a golden era of UK China relations in a speech at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, positioning Britain as China's best partner in the West. A decade on, though, a wall of distrust has risen. MI6 has sounded the alarm on Chinese espionage, prompting hard conversations about national security and infrastructure. At the same time, our economic dependencies on China cannot be unwound overnight. It's a confusing picture for anyone trying to make sense of it, so in this episode, we're zooming out to look at China as a global payer, its economic rise, its assertiveness and regional influence, its strategy in the so called global south, and what its backing of Russia's war on Ukraine means for European security. To discuss all of this and more, I'm joined this week by Isabel Hilton, a longtime journalist and expert on China and geopolitics. Hello Isabel, welcome to World Interrupted. This is a podcast where we are trying to take a step back from the constant news notifications to better understand the shift in the international order and where the UK fits into this. Clearly, China is a protagonist in this story of the shifting world order and is driving many of the changes that we're seeing. I want to use this conversation with you to understand the massive transformation that China has undergone in the last few decades and then also what it's now setting out to achieve. And finally, how that should inform UK's foreign policy. So I was wondering if we could start with a bit of broad context. Could you talk us through some of the the key points in recent Chinese history that have paved the way to its rise and help us understand that economic transformation? well, certainly Zoe, very, very happy to be talking to you about this. Actually, it's quite a good moment to be doing it because this is the this week is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong. And Mao, who dominated China for the first thirty years of the People's Republic, did quite extraordinary economic damage on the whole, through things like the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. So when he died, Deng Xiaoping, who had been a long running sort of adversary really of Mao's, was a man in a hurry and he there was there was a great deal of damage to undo. I mean China's economy, it's hard to think of it now, but it was smaller than Belgium's economy. and its major export was was pigs bristle. It was really, you know, it had a very small industrial sector which had been built substantially by the Soviets before the Sino Soviet split. So it was it was in a mess. You know, everything was rationed, basics like like oil and co cotton and and rice, all all very restricted supply. And China had suffered This 30 years of internal violence in which millions had died. so y Deng Xiaoping comes comes in, he starts what is essentially a long process of rectification and catch up. There was so much suppressed growth in the economy that that all you you know, in the first instance, essentially they if they took their foot off the people's neck, you know, things would would be better. And they did that. They they opened up the possibility of people in the countryside having small enterprises, of you know, eventually they did away with the people's communes. And the big changes come after Tiananmen, after nineteen eighty nine. So the beginning of the nineties, when, you know, things in China were very, very dodgy because you'd had this major political crisis. The economy had expanded but with inflation. and so it needed a new start. And Deng Xiaoping went on a famous journey, a southern tour, down to the Guangdong, the southern provinces, in order to make a pitch to the party and the party conservatives that China needed to open up to outside investment in a contained way, but nevertheless. And to look for foreign markets and to begin a process of semi-privatization. So s big state owned enterprises were were sold off. People were allowed to move to where there was a demand for labour. So again, people came in from the countryside into the cities. We begin to see a a a forty year boom in infrastructure building. Again, very little had been done in Mao's time. So there were airports and railways and roads to build. There was new housing to build. So all of that functioned as a great driver for the economy. and then, you know, the special economic zones, which were a direct result of Dung's Southern Tour were contained areas where foreign firms could invest in Chinese capacity. That was hugely successful. So by 2001, China was ready for WTO membership. And this coincided with what I think we'll look back on and see as the high tide of globalization. So China suddenly had access to global markets, you know, very favorable conditions and again more inward investment. China controlled inward investment to the to the degree that it it initially you were only allowed to invest in a joint venture and you had to transfer intellectual property. So all of this became a process of integrating with the global economy, big demand for raw materials from particularly from the global south, but also upgrading China's capacity. This has gone on now for thirty years and China is now, of course, the world's major manufacturing power. It's the it's it operates a a bruising trade surplus with the rest of the world, which is now a problem. And for the last fifteen years it's invested heavily in advanced technologies, in particular transition technologies. So everything to do with renewable energy, from solar panels, wind technology, nuclear, it always built big dams, that's continued. So all of this, you know, positions China to dominate almost every sector. And I as I say, this is beginning to be a problem because it's threatening the prosperity of large parts of the rest of the world. I feel like there's there's so much to unpack there and hopefully we can l come back to many of those aspects throughout conversation. But first I want to start in the the region closest to to China. How would you say perhaps that economic transformation, it's political strategy or economic strategy from those past few decades? has informed its relationship with countries in the near seas. What is it trying to achieve now? Well it perhaps we should distinguish between the economic policy and the strategic policy because both are very relevant to the question. So in terms of economic policy, China's the biggest trade partner of most of the neighborhood. and in depending on the kind of state of of other economies and and their capacity. It's quite an intricate relationship in which, for example, supply chains reach out into the neighborhood. So so Chinese industry will be drawing on supply chains in other parts of the world, in other parts of the region. So it has enormous economic leverage. And on the whole, it's been regarded as, you know, a a positive it's China's made a positive contribution to prosperity. elsewhere in the region. strategically and in terms of security, it's rather a different picture. So I would I would venture that the long term ambition of China in the neighborhood is to exclude US influence and the United States as a strategic player. So you find that relations with countries that are allies of the United States, that would be the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, These are seen as US proxies and there are frequently tensions. There are also tensions and shared interests indeed with Vietnam, with which China fought the only war in recent memory that China fought in the nineteen seventies and didn't do terribly well against Vietnam. So there are n tensions with all the neighbors in the South China Sea, which China is claiming as its own effectively and has militarized, and of course Taiwan. which is a very clear ambition to as the as Beijing would put it, reunite Taiwan with the mainland and that would give China essentially the capacity to dominate the First Island chain. And that's very complicated for Japan, very complicated for for South Korea. So again, you know, there's a wider region in which China, for example, China has a lot of of neighbors and a lot of borders to think about. So Pakistan is a historically very close relationship. It has a small border with Afghanistan. It has maintained relations with the Taliban throughout. Myanmar, another key relationship, which I would say those three relationships is China really trying to contain trouble in what is a difficult neighborhood. It's become the dominant power in Central Asia in many ways. That used to be Russian domain, but China has, by virtue of its growth and importance, displaced Russia to some extent. And the recent complication of the Russia relationship and and in particular Russia's relationship with North Korea. So w the one of the most complicated neighbors that China has is North Korea. It's always been a very fraught relationship. It's very close at the same time. There are deep suspicions and it's quite worried, I think, about the about North Korea being encouraged and enabled by Moscow, 'cause China would really prefer North Korea to remain dependent on China and therefore to some extent you know, China retains leverage against the excesses of North Korea's ambitions. So it's a complicated neighborhood. And just pulling back from the neighborhood to the to the wider global relationship, China does need a relatively stable global picture because it needs to export, it needs to maintain its economic momentum somehow, and for that it needs it needs the outside world. Well, I would like to come back to Russia and North Korea in a second, but on that point that they need stable and a sort of relatively peaceful world order. Do you think its aggressive posture in the region is sort of achieving the opposite of what it wants by attracting more US attention? I would describe China in the region as assertive rather than aggressive. And China, rather like Russia, is is really quite good at advancing its claims by just changing the facts on the ground. just below the level of of military conflict. So the South China Sea is an absolutely classic case. China promised the United States in the Obama administration that it wouldn't militarize the South China Sea and then went ahead and did it. and these confrontations with the neighbors in that there's one going on quite actively at the moment with the Philippines. You know, they tend to be carried out by ships that are described as coastguard rather than navy. they're very heavily fortified and they're very aggressive ships. But i nobody is quite going to go to war over one particular rock in the South China Sea, and that's what they depend on. And I think part of the Taiwan strategy, if they dial it up, will be rather similar. You know, that Taiwan is an archipelago. There are lots of islands that you could seize without anyone wishing to to enter major military conflict and and I'm sure that's part of the playbook. As far as how that affects its diplomatic relations, I mean we have to I'm afraid we have to factor in the behavior of the Trump administration and the and the effect that that is having on the neighborhood. Because if South Korea can no longer depend on the United States and the United States pulled out of or limited its participation in standard military exercise this year. relations Trump's relationships with Japan not that great. His relationship with China is very hard to read. Sometimes it is, you know, enthusiastic and claiming close personal relationships, as he does with North Korea. So this, you know, shift in the US position, is it a position shift? Is it a a a strategy shift? It's hard to say. But of course that affects the region because if you can't if you can't count on the US balancing Chinese power in the neighborhood, then you have to make a different set of calculations. And I don't think any of the countries want to rush into China's arms. But, you know, you can't change geography. China is an enormous and important part of that neighborhood, always will be. So, you know, as Singapore has done for years, they will be most of the countries in the region will be balancing their strategic and their economic interests and their long term situation with with with China is they don't want China as an enemy, but they don't want China as a master either. Moving back to what we're talking about on Russia, Russia and North Korea. And I talk about the CRINKS, the acronym that stands for China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. The Western termed Western coin term To sort of talk about this axis of of chaos or a group of countries seeking to upend a global order, perhaps not necessarily in in China's interest. Firstly, I wanted to ask you whether you think that grouping is overestimating its coherence as a political bloc. And secondly, has has China emerged as a sort of a cool headed leader of that group? Yeah, I think we have to be a little bit careful of of assuming that an acronym, however, you know, neat, actually describes a situation. I mean there has never been a crink summit. I think that China's position of promoting a multilateral world order certainly chimes with the ambitions of all members of the group if we can call it a group. But in many ways, you know, their their their their needs and ambitions are very different. You know, China is the world's most important manufacturing and trading nation. Iran isn't, it's it's essentially, you know, it has oil, and that's looking a little bit more complicated than it was. Russia, very similar, you know, again, you know, that's an economy. Italy has a bigger economy than Russia has. North Korea is ha you know, a a poverty stricken, hereditary dictatorship with very dangerous weapons. So they're very different. You know, North Korea barely trades at all, you know, and with with the rest of the world. So disruption for countries like North Korea and Russia is probably a good thing. You know, Russia doesn't depend on the global economy in the way China does. So China is certainly the mo the more level headed country in that in that acronym. I I would th look for ways in which they can perhaps support each other over very narrow very narrow issues, but I would not make the mistake of thinking that this is a a durable or even a coherent alliance in any sense. Hm. Do you think we have a a good or a better understanding of the bilateral relationship between China and Russia? It's c it's quite difficult to be sure about the China Russia Russia relationship, you know, because both have opaque systems. It's also a relationship that has shifted significantly over the years. You know, the USSR, the Soviet Union, used to be the big power and it treated China like the little brother that had to be tutored in communism. China was dependent and weaker. And then of course the great blow up in nineteen sixty one with the Sino Soviet split. So today the position is reversed. China is by far the bigger power. Russia is, you know, in in decline. And without China propping up Russia over Ukraine, I very much doubt that Russia could be able to continue its war of aggression in Ukraine. Now that war has some advantages for China. It in terms of of military distractions. On the other hand, it has completely soured its relations with the European Union. And so at every meeting, and the meetings have been pretty fraught lately between China and Europe, the question of Ukraine comes up with with a fresh sensitivity to the degree that China is a security risk. because we don't know how how much is is shared with Moscow. But we have to assume, I think, prudently, that if this is a a very close relationship as Xi Jinping and Putin both say, then we absolutely need to take a precautionary approach to China's involvement with things like critical infrastructure, because you know, these are all things that can be weaponized, trade flows can be weaponized. Will there ever be a point at which for China the advantages of supporting Russia? in this war or they'll be outweighed by the by the frictions it's having with Europe. Well the frictions with Europe are are important because Europe's a very important trade partner for China. However, there are other things going on. We've just had a a rather dramatic result in a in in Germany in in one of the Land elections. It's not a big state, but you know, AFD is an important factor in anyone's calculations because it it's a pro Russia party, anti Ukraine party. So China may be watching these developments closely and thinking, well, at some point Europe's will to continue is going to decline and that kind of solves China's problem for it. In the meantime, there are moments when China would claim to have exercised restraint. For example, it has exercised a restraining hand on Russia over the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which at some point Russia seemed to be considering seriously and certainly some prominent voices in Russia still advocate the use of nuclear weapons. China I think we can absolutely believe China in that respect that it has said to Moscow, No, don't do that. That's you're going too far. Long may that continue. So there's some moderating impact that China can have as long as it is involved in that conversation. Yes, the China's also anxious to maintain this this distinction, if you like, between Beijing and and Moscow in the sense that, you know, China China always claims it's never invaded anyone, it's not an aggressive power, it doesn't do this. and that's an important that's an important part of China's appeal to you know the rest of the world that you can trust us, we we are not an aggressive revisionist power. Well, up to a point. But nevertheless, that is important for its image. You mentioned before that that relationship between China and Russia would be cause for concern for European security in looking at certain parts of infrastructure. That's been a very live conversation in in recent years. And in in the UK there's been lots of conversation about Taking Huawei out of telecoms infrastructure was an important conversation then, and that's since grown. How how do you think I mean how how would you approach that question of trade-offs between the security risks that China clearly presents, whilst also the economic dependence that the UK and other European countries also have? Well, I think I think you can it it's a very, very important question. And I think that we are beginning to see a shift in the kind of absolute position on free trade and no industrial policy that thrived in the, you know, golden years of of globalization. And the understanding that dependencies, be they economic or, you know, supply chain dependencies, can be weaponized and have been. so I think that for European countries and indeed for the United Kingdom, we have to stop and think. What are our strategic industries? How do we maintain them? And what do we have to do to ensure they survive when they are faced with competition from China, where there is a whole range of assistance and policy driven support given by the Chinese government at state and national level to to Chinese industries. And that's a strategic approach. Security question number two is, you know, where we, for instance, have a conflict of of ambition over climate change. We need, like everybody else, to move as quickly as we can to a a low fossil or zero fossil economy. China, of course, dominates their renewable technologies. The problem with that is that all renewable technologies are smart technologies and that's everything from electric vehicles to wind farm inverters or solar farm inverters. And those can also be weaponized because the manufacturer retains access and control for actually perfectly legitimate reasons, which can be used for illegitimate purposes. So that's a problem. I think that's essentially a technical problem. I'm not a technician, but I'm pretty sure we could, if we collectively put our mind to it, ensure that we can use parts of Chinese output, but not a hundred percent of it, and ensure that there are firewalls that we can bring down between Chinese equipment on our critical national infrastructure and that infrastructure to reduce the vulnerabilities. That's a pretty urgent technical stroke security problem. I should also maybe say that there will always be, I think, tensions between the desire to trade and the fact that China, you know, now produces advanced technologies very cheaply and monopolizes the supply chains for those technologies. If you talk to big companies that trade with China, they essentially say, It's the biggest market in the world, we can't afford not to be in it. It's worth looking very hard at companies that went in with both feet into the Chinese market, made big bets on the Chinese market and see how they're doing now. Because most of them will tell you that there was, you know, a brief moment of, you know, a a bit of a sugar rush, but now it's much more difficult. China's much more restricted. They've transferred a l a lot of intellectual property, which the Chinese are now using against them to compete in third markets. So as a long-term strategy, it has turned out not to be quite as good as it looked. And, you know, look at the German car industry, for example, just one example. Or solar panels. Technologies that we used to dominate and that, you know, we have ceded to China. So there's in terms of of the long term prosperity of Europe or the United Kingdom, you know, that was a pretty risky bet and in many ways has not paid off. So that it's very difficult to get business to think in, you know, ten year increments. It's quite hard to get politicians to think in ten year increments. but if you look back on the last decade, there are some pretty sobering lessons. And if we are to ensure that we retain our autonomy, of, you know, policy autonomy and national interest, we're gonna have to do a little more coherent planning. because we need a sustained effort at this point. Hmm. I'd I'd like to come back to to the UK, but talking about China's dominance in manufacturing, the fact that it's reliant on monopoly of supply chains brings me to think about the Belt and Road Initiative and China's strong relationship with a lot of countries in the global south and then acquiring the more the raw materials that it needs for this manufacturing. Can we talk a bit about that? And I think it's something that we heard a lot about, I think, about a decade ago. And I feel like that's that's waned. Maybe that's just from a Western media reporting perspective. But is there less of a strategy at the forefront of BRI. And before you answer that, it it also reminds me of the beginning when you were talking about Deng Xiaoping's economic strategy, how it was led by opening up to international partners. Is this is the BRI sort of is that that same playbook of that in that case it was special economic zones. In this case it's another form of kind of expansion for for trying to keep Bringing those raw materials. do you agree? Is that the same playbook? And also is that expansion limited? There are I mean, and it yes to all of the above really is the answer to that. So if you look at China's relationship with the outside world in in this, you know, 30 year window, it goes through some distinct phases. As we've discussed, Deng Xiaoping begins to open up to investment. As China's industrial capacity grows, it needs raw materials. So the first reach into the outside world, into other trading partners, particularly in the emerging economies, was over the necessary inputs that China needed in order to continue to expand. Then it as it had some success, it was looking for markets. You know, how does it expand its it continue to expand its economy in the global market, WTO and so on. And then we get to twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, and we've got a bit of a different problem. So the problem that you had then is very much the problem that Japan had in the nineteen nineties, and China reaches for the same solution that Japan reached for. So the Belt and Road is actually you can read as a as it originally a Japanese idea. What was the problem? Well the problem was that building infrastructure had been a major driver of the economy. And China and Japan had built so much of it that in the end you you know, you they had to stop pouring concrete because they had built the airports, they built the roads, they built the housing. but they had all this capacity in engineering and in and they had these very big firms that could that were very good at doing it. So the initial idea of the Belt and Road, as the Japan initiative in the nineties was to say, well, we can build infrastructure abroad. We have all of Eurasia that needs infrastructure, or Latin America, or Africa. So that was what Belton Road began as in twenty thirteen when Xi Jinping announced it. Now, the issue for Japan was that it they had to you know, who's gonna pay for this? because you're building in countries that, you know, on the whole don't have enormously deep pockets and may well have external debt already. So The question is where does the finance come from? And Japan discovered quite quickly that, you know, after doing doing the due diligence that, you know, this this was a limiting factor. and China, which didn't do quite as much due diligence as Japan did in the first three or four years, there was a burst of enthusiastic lending, Chinese finance. So China would turn up and would say, We can build you, for example, coal-fired power station, which they did a lot of in the early years of the Belt and Road. And we can put the finance on the on the table, we can put the expertise on the table, we can put the whole package, just sign here. And and that's what happened for the first three or four years. And then we began to get problems of debt, that this infrastructure doesn't pay for itself. And in the end, although China had financed it, it was the host countries that had to pay for it. And that again is a limiting factor, as China discovered, just as Japan had discovered. So after three or four years of very exuberant and high volume activity, it all begins to slow down rather and Chinese banks become rather more cautious and now are extremely cautious. And instead of, you know, China dominating the the the whole kind of global south, we get talk of small but beautiful projects rather than the big ones. What China has achieved in that few first few years included the the road element of Belt and Road, which tends not to get the attention I think it deserves because counterintuitively the road is actually about maritime roads. It's about building ports, it's about it's about gaining access to strategic assets in in enhancing the capacity of the Chinese marine the Chinese merchant and military fleets to operate anywhere. And that was quite successful, certainly in the Pacific, or even if you look at Rotterdam or you look at the the Greek port of Piraeus. These are all These have all become important hubs for Chinese trade and in the Pacific for dual use access. So it had its successes. But you're absolutely right. It's not really talked about it in the same terms. And the ten the ten year anniversary was a very, very subdued affair indeed in in Beijing. So we're in a different moment now. You you mentioned the the debt problem that it's faced, and one of the key criticism leveled at the BRI is China's debt trap diplomacy, as it's called, where it can take possession of infrastructure assets like ports or or refineries. It sounds like what you're saying is that was more of a consequence of that, rather than built into the strategy of BRI. Yeah, I i it's a very overblown idea that it was originally floated by a rather hostile Indian commentator on China's operations. And I mean, as you suggest, I think it was an unintended consequence rather than a strategy. The most notorious case that people often cite was that of a port, Hamban Toto, which is a a a port in in Sri Lanka, which China ended up getting a ninety year lease on in in in lieu of debt. But if you look at that if you look at that particular episode, China was only one of several creditors, and and actually not the biggest one. China is unhelpful in the sense that it doesn't cooperate with the Paris Club and a lot of China's agreements with the countries in which it does build infrastructure have a kind of built-in condition that China will be given priority in terms of debt repayment over any other creditors. And that's unhelpful from the position of the other creditors. So China doesn't do kind of joint approaches, but in terms of renegotiating bilateral arrangements, China has proved fairly flexible, in fact. and and again, is still not the biggest creditor of of many of these countries. One thing China does do in terms of its relationship with the global south is it tells a very good story. and it if you actually look at the figures, you know, Europe is is almost as big an investor as as China is, you know, and and indeed the United States is still a pretty big investor in the global sound. China tells a better story. And and part of China's appeal was that if a European country or the European Union wants to invest, it has to respect certain conditions. It d which are on the whole, in the previous global order, we're in a new phase now, but things like human rights and, you know, gender rights and environmental responsibilities were kind of built in. Now that might be irksome to a a a host country, but you know, I f I still find it difficult to see those as bad things. China used to you say, we're going to interfere in your domestic policy, that really doesn't matter to us. And in some Chinese writing, you discover this being referred to as the low human rights advantage. And the other thing is if you really don't have a policy against corruption, y a lot of what you supply, you know, will go to offshore bank accounts in in Geneva and not actually into the projects that you that you ostensibly are investing in. So I think that the virtues of non transparency, while they have a short appeal in countries that are perhaps not best governed, in the longer term they they fail. you've done a lot of w work on China's environmental and climate policies. Where do you think China stands now as a as a climate leader, especially now that it it seems to be increasing its coal production? China has been part of the global effort on climate from the beginning. it it was in Rio, it was in Kyoto. It it Kyoto, China quite appropriately, was considered a non-annex one country. In other words, a country that had not contributed enormously to climate change and had the right to some remaining space. So it was committed to nationally appropriate mitigation actions. Now China played that card as long as it could. And and it coincided, this period coincided with this enormous industrial revolution. So China went from being a relatively insignificant emitter to the world's biggest. And that's a serious problem. But at the same time, China saw climate change as an industrial opportunity and invested when it was obliged to move up the value chain, and because that's what happens with industrial revolutions. You start off doing the cheap low added value stuff, you know, and then you have to you have to move up or you stagnate. China moved up into transition technologies, which it now dominates. So it in the course of doing that, it's brought the price down of those technologies to the point where price is no longer a barrier in most geographies. It's cheaper to go renewable than it is to build a coal or a gas fire power station. Why then is China continuing? To build coal-fired power stations, and it is. They're very advanced, they're very efficient, but they shouldn't be there. that was partly because of energy security. China is short of fossil fuels, it it's pretty much exhausted its its native oil. It may have some fracking gas, but you know, not enough. It has a lot of hydro, it is building a lot of nuclear. but actually if you're looking at fossil fuel that it doesn't have to import, that doesn't have to come through choke points like the Malacca Straits, it's cool. I want us to come back to UK policy and thinking about the UK's reliance on China, particularly when it comes to the energy transition and for clean sources of energy UVs, it's not just a security risk that we talked about earlier. There's also human rights considerations, human rights abuses, one slavery within the supply chain from China. And I suppose that leads me to ask you whether you think the UK has got the right approach when it comes to China. I think something the Labour government came up with in their mana manifesto was the three C's cooperate, compete, challenge, which I think from as an outsider perspective can be quite confusing because you're not really sure where That leaves you in every instance, you know, what does it mean for UK businesses? What does it mean for public? What does it mean for the government? and I wanted to ask you, has the UK got the right balance and between all those risks? And does the government have the expertise to judge those those those those trade-offs? the the three Cs. corporate compete challenge. the i almost every advanced economy has has a version of this. I mean Europe has a version of this. And it in a way it it's a description of the problem rather than a solution. It's quite hard to know UK policy on China has gone through so many wild swings since the golden era under Cameron and Osborne to you know and there's quite a substantial body of British political opinion, which is very hostile. the security services are much more alert at the same time. China's the world's second biggest economy. So that's the dilemma. And that is, you know, if you like, more admiring of the problem. It's quite hard to know if the British state has got things right because after doing a a a re a a refresh, a review of of UK China relations, the report was immediately classified. So it's very difficult to know if we've got the balance right. But you can see some tensions. For example, over the Minyang decision, Mingyang, a Chinese wind energy company wanted to build a substantial factory in Scotland. The Scottish Government was keen. the UK government killed it on security ground. So you can see that, you know, there are continuing tensions. it's hard to say that anyone has got it absolutely right, not least because, you know, the UK is in a relatively weak position since Brexit. we're a much smaller market. We don't have the solidarity of of European Union behind us anymore. And the United States has has gone into a very, very strange and d divergent role. So the UK is, you know, relatively isolated in trying to deal with China. So It it's it's not easy. I think it would be prudent to avoid creating greater dependencies. And I think that that actually, as I as I said earlier, that's the long term strategic worry because as soon as you are dependent, then that dependency can be used. over other issues. There's no magic solution to dealing with China. National security should be a priority, work downstream from there. and be sure that you understand the problem well enough to deal with it to to that part of your question. Given how how broad the engagement between the UK and China now is, you know, you have city councils dealing with their counterparts in China as well as national governments. You have devolved administrations dealing with China. You have universities which are now highly dependent on China. And I'm not sure that all these relationships are managed with quite the level of information. that they require. You can be quite sure that if you sit down to negotiate something with China, the person across the table will know quite a lot about you, about your position, about your limitations. do you know the same about that person across the table? Probably not. You know, we don't educate people on China nearly enough. if you think, you know, how much we know about European history or British history, how much does the average school leaver know about Chinese history? or indeed the average university graduate, or the average civil servant? Not enough, I think. Thank you. Well I think that that warning or that call to action is a is a great place to end on. thank you very much for joining me. This has been a very very full conversation. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. I enjoyed the conversation.