- reducing dependencies."[1] This would appear to indicate something of a departure from its previous approach—although HMG downplayed the shift, describing it as "a pivot to greater resilience", rather than there being a sense of an explicit shift away from China.[2]
- The Integrated Review was published in March 2021. It is notable that, while the Review described Russia as an "acute and direct threat", it labelled China a "systemic competitor" and the "biggest state-based threat to the UK's economic security"—suggesting that Russia was still considered to pose the greater national security threat to the UK. Yet this contradicts the very clear impression given to this Committee that China is the main state security threat to British interests.[3]
- It is at least clear that, following the global pandemic in 2020, and China's response to it, the security concerns previously raised by the UK Intelligence Community are now at the forefront of Ministers' minds—a change acknowledged in December 2020 by the Deputy National Security Adviser (DNSA) and Director General MI5. The Director General noted that, whilst it had been the case in the past that "the national security community within Government and the prosperity community weren't really talking to each other", he now considered that the need to "integrate our understanding across both these domains to make the best possible choices" was a well-established fact.[4] The DNSA told us:
in the past we have perhaps not had as rigorous a process at identifying across the board what needs to be protected, based on our sovereign interest. We've had a very sophisticated process in some areas—so, for example, Critical National Infrastructure, which includes Energy and so on. We've been weaker in other areas, for example, emerging technology, potentially strategic suppliers and interdependences and data and telecoms infrastructure particularly.[5]
The DNSA cited forthcoming legislation and policy frameworks as a sign that "we are beginning to establish some rigour in the system"—better late than never, perhaps.[6]
- However, there is still a question as to whether the planning that has finally now begun is too short term: when asked in July 2019 what was the greatest threat posed by China, Director GCHQ told us that his "strategic concern" was that:
we are not thinking long-term enough about the threat that China poses, given its aspirations are out to 2049, 2039, 2025, depending on which of their documents you read and of course all of those are way beyond traditional government planning cycles.[7]
- In July 2019, the previous DNSA had voiced similar concerns, noting that "we tend to put a very short time horizon on things" and that what the NSC needed to start doing was "being a little bit more Chinese... taking a long term view about where do we need to be on
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