CHINA
Since the Committee completed its evidence-taking, HMG has updated its terminology, and now refers to 'State Threats' instead of 'Hostile State Activity'. There appeared to be a number of reasons for this change: the Home Office explained that it was not felt to sufficiently reflect the complexity of the UK-China bilateral relationship and there were concerns over how the term could be received within East Asian-heritage communities in the UK. However, NSS subsequently explained that China was not the driving factor, and that the terminology had been changed because the term could be too easily misinterpreted as referring to a hostile state, rather than hostile activity as was originally intended.
- Part of the Strategy focuses specifically on China, saying that: ***. Nevertheless, it adds that: ***.[1] HMG's aims in relation to HSA *** are set out as being to: ***
- ***. The Committee was told in 2020 that a number of pieces of work have been carried out under the Strategy since it was introduced, including:
- Establishing the Joint State Threats Assessment Team (JSTAT);
- *** publicly attributing cyber incidents alongside a range of allies and partners;
- Agreeing and initiating the Defending Democracy programme;
- Pursuing a comprehensive response to the threat of state-based disinformation, ***;
- ***; and
- Working with international ***.[2]
- While the Strategy is currently being refreshed, HMG has not—as at December 2021—provided a date for when it expects it to be ready, despite the fact that the current refresh started before August 2019.[3] As with the emerging technology policy area, it is concerning that decisions on such an important policy area are not being made with any urgency.
- HMG argues that there is a lot of work going on in the China portfolio. In October 2020, the Acting NSA told us that there was an "enormous amount of work underway at the moment" including:
*** lots of direct support to universities at the moment in that sector, for example, and lots of very demanding case work … it will be one of the major themes of the Integrated Review. We are creating new legislative powers through the Bills that I mentioned, we are trying to develop new capabilities across government, whether it is in investment screening, whether it is around education, whether it is around interference or disinformation, it is all a work in progress, given the evolution of the scale of the challenge that I mentioned earlier.[4]
66
