EDWARD LUCAS: Stand up to China? Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, whose cowardice and folly over the Beijing threat persist, is entirely the wrong man for the job
Sun Tzu, the military genius of ancient China who wrote The Art Of War, had a telling aphorism: 'The opportunity to defeat the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.'
Our weaknesses, he meant, are gifts to those who would do us harm.
And China has been relentlessly probing the West's weaknesses for years — testing our defences and identifying our vulnerabilities.
Yesterday came a sharp reminder of the extent of this espionage, as Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden briefed Parliament about a string of devastating cyber attacks masterminded by Beijing's spooks.
The electoral records of some 40 million people — including almost certainly yours and mine — have been accessed by 'malign actors' working for the repressive one-party state, he said.
The data includes precise details of who lived at specific addresses and for how long. But that is only the start.
![As Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016, David Cameron repeatedly minimised the economic, military and political threat represented by the Chinese party-state.](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/25/21/82882191-0-image-a-2_1711403375921.jpg)
As Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016, David Cameron repeatedly minimised the economic, military and political threat represented by the Chinese party-state.
![Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and Premier Li Qiang (right) arrive for the closing session of the National People's Congress earlier this month](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/25/21/82882177-0-image-a-1_1711403364514.jpg)
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and Premier Li Qiang (right) arrive for the closing session of the National People's Congress earlier this month
Beijing was probably seeking something far more sensitive: the Electoral Commission's secret list of anonymous voters — who do not appear on the electoral roll.
As well as people placed in witness-protection schemes and those escaping political persecution, this separate list includes our security and intelligence officials who must stay off public databases.
The prospect of Beijing coming anywhere near to finding the name and address of every spy in Britain should set Whitehall alarms blaring.
Yet the response has been dismally weak. It has taken a year for our authorities even to admit publicly that China is behind the hack.
This is part of a much bigger picture. Further targeted hacks have hit a group of at least 43 influential China hawks, including senior MPs and peers, among them former Tory party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
Meanwhile, another group of state-sponsored Chinese hackers, called 'Volt Typhoon', have penetrated deep into the West's critical infrastructure, with FBI director Christopher Wray telling U.S. lawmakers this was the 'defining threat of our generation'.
Together, it all represents a disaster for Britain's security — and today should stand as the moment we wake up to the threat posed by the ghouls of this ugly regime.
Yet with almost painful irony, it fell to Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton to brief the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs about the hacks.
As Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016, David Cameron repeatedly minimised the economic, military and political threat represented by the Chinese party-state.
Now he can no longer underplay the dangers.
Chinese state hackers have been stealing similar databases around the free world for at least a decade. Their coups include millions of U.S. government personnel records — including highly sensitive security clearance applications — in 2014.
Millions of credit-reference files, airline records, hotel reservations and mobile phone accounts have also been compromised.
The dawn of biometric data means Chinese spies know faces, voices, fingerprints and even how we walk — a gait is a personal identifier that cannot be altered by disguise or surgery.
As you read this, China's sophisticated artificial-intelligence software is scanning these vast datasets, looking for patterns and anomalies, filtering and targeting people as sources of intelligence or points of pressure.
In short, the terrifying Orwellian surveillance system already used inside China — which publicly shames people for jaywalking and which imprisons and tortures ordinary citizens at will — is now being used against us.
To be blunt, every commercial, political, military and intelligence secret in every Western country is vulnerable to attack from Beijing, now and in the future.
They will not sleep until they have acquired it all — with terrifying consequences for our independence and freedom.
![China's President Xi Jinping and Mr Cameron drink a pint of beer during a visit to The Plough pub in London in October 2015](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/25/21/82755161-0-China_s_President_Xi_Jinping_and_Mr_Cameron_drink_a_pint_of_beer-a-4_1711403647318.jpg)
China's President Xi Jinping and Mr Cameron drink a pint of beer during a visit to The Plough pub in London in October 2015
The need for drastic action is clear — yet our Foreign Secretary is entirely the wrong man for the job.
Remember, Lord Cameron presided over the unlamented 'Golden Age' in Britain's relations with China.
From 2010, this essentially consisted of a series of humiliating concessions from Britain to China, on all fronts, including arm-twisting the late Queen to offer tea at Buckingham Palace to a visiting Chinese bigwig.
When Chinese dictator-for-life Xi Jinping came to Britain in 2015, he visited a pub with Cameron and posed for selfies — while police scandalously used anti-terrorism powers against peaceful protesters.
True, the visit brought tens of billions of pounds in economic deals — at a time when national security took second place to business with large and powerful countries.
But we are hastily dismantling many of those Cameron-era deals, not least Chinese involvement in our nuclear power programme, as we belatedly acknowledge the manifest security risks.
Many of our universities, too, have sold out to China, which sends more than 150,000 students here — a lucrative customer base that enables the bullies of Beijing to curb academic freedom .
Other legacies of Cameron's cowardice and folly persist. To its disgrace, Britain has yet to impose a single sanction on the Chinese officials who have ripped up every promise to maintain autonomy, the rule of law and other freedoms in Hong Kong.
Cameron limply calls China's treatment of our former territory 'very challenging'. Beijing, he adds, has become 'more assertive'.
Yet he and the Government have yet to designate China as a full-scale threat to our national security — even after the devastating hacks revealed this week.
Indeed, last November, just as Cameron returned to office, the Government indefinitely suspended asset freezes and travel bans on Chinese officials.
One reason for our timidity is simple. Swathes of Britain's commercial, financial and cultural elite have enjoyed lucrative professional and personal contracts with China over the past 20 years.
Cameron himself has benefited at least indirectly. Shortly after leaving Downing Street, he led a $1 billion UK-China fund that aimed to boost British participation in China's global infrastructure schemes and other trade and investment projects.
![Mr Cameron was facing questions tonight over the Government's 'indefinite' pausing of sanctions against Chinese officials and firms on Thursday, March 21](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/03/25/21/82755159-0-Foreign_Secretary_David_Cameron_was_facing_questions_tonight_ove-a-3_1711403644618.jpg)
Mr Cameron was facing questions tonight over the Government's 'indefinite' pausing of sanctions against Chinese officials and firms on Thursday, March 21
In 2017, barely a year after leaving office, he pressed the fund's case with then Chancellor Philip Hammond.
Ex-prime ministers are usually expected to wait two years before lobbying government, but Cameron showed no such compunction.
Though the fund failed, Cameron's pro-China bias continued. He spoke at a conference in Sri Lanka in January last year, championing the Colombo Port City project, an infrastructure scheme part-owned by China. (Cameron insists he visited the project as the guest of the Sri Lankan president, and was paid to speak by a local company.)
Cameron needs to grasp that the only way to address the threat from Beijing is by standing up to it and discarding naiveties about the state's malicious aims.
He must get tough, and quickly — for the sake of our democracy.
It is time for sober realism when it comes to our dealings with China. No longer should we — or anyone — make excuses for their deplorable interference in our country's private affairs.
Edward Lucas is the author of Spycraft Rebooted: How Technology Is Changing Espionage.