British government faces claims of capitulation to Beijing after spy trial collapses
Originally published at Nikkei Asia on Oct. 13, 2025. Photo: Reuters
LONDON -- The British government is facing fresh accusations of turning a blind eye to security threats posed by Beijing and prioritizing closer economic ties, following the collapse of a Chinese spy trial.
Charges against two British nationals -- Christopher Cash, 30, and Christopher Berry, 33 -- accused of spying for the Chinese Communist Party, were unexpectedly dropped last month by the Crown Prosecution Service, which said it was unable to obtain critical evidence from the government that Beijing posed a threat to national security.
Cash and Berry denied violating the Official Secrets Act by providing information that was useful to an "enemy" -- a label that the current Labour and former Conservative governments have not used to describe China, despite pressure to do so from hawkish members of parliament.
"When it comes to our security services, they have a lot of evidence to show threats [from Beijing]," Luke de Pulford, executive director of the cross-border Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, told Nikkei Asia, referring to warnings from MI5, Britain's security service. "The government has shown itself susceptible to Beijing's coercion. They're trying to pretend we can defend human rights and national security while still failing to hold Beijing accountable for their massive breaches of those things."
The collapse of the case was condemned by Conservative politicians and activists who are concerned about the threat of Chinese espionage, particularly as Beijing plans to build a controversial "super embassy" in the heart of London that critics argue will become a tool for interference and transnational repression.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer was quoted by local media as saying he was "disappointed" in the trial's collapse, but stressed that the evidence had to be provided on the basis of government policy at the time of the alleged offences, which occurred under the previous administration.
While ministers are considering including parts of Beijing's security apparatus on the enhanced tier of the country's new foreign influence registration scheme -- which covers countries deemed a risk to Britain -- China is not on the list.
Those on the enhanced tier include Iran and Russia, a state that has been linked to attacks on Russian defectors in the U.K. Critics say the government had also failed to properly hold Moscow and its proxies to account for those attacks.
The Labour government has sought to repair Sino-British relations since it returned to power last year after ties deteriorated under the previous hawkish Conservative governments.
High-level visits between the countries have now resumed, with the British chancellor and foreign secretary both travelling to Beijing in recent months. Starmer is also reportedly planning a trip to China, which would be the first by a British prime minister in at least seven years.
But Kerry Brown, director of King's College London's Lau China Institute who was also an expert witness for Berry at the collapsed trial, told Nikkei that the claim that Britain is "kowtowing" to Beijing is an exaggeration.
The real problem lies with the fact that the government -- under both Labour and the Conservatives -- lacks a coherent strategy of engagement with China, a powerful state that Brown said was neither a "straightforward enemy or ally," but a "complex partner."
"There are ways in which we just aren't able to ignore China, from climate change to sustainability to technology," Brown said. "A framework that gets a balance is what Britain wants. I'm not denying that China is posing all sorts of issues for Britain ... but I don't think it helps to make these claims stronger than they are, and say it's controlling all sorts of institutions and interfering in British politics."
Fears about Beijing's influence over British campuses in particular have risen in recent years, as the higher education industry's dependence on Chinese students -- who consistently make up the largest proportion of the country's international students -- shows no signs of easing. China is Britain's second-largest research collaborator and fifth-largest trading partner.
Chinese surveillance in Britain is felt most acutely by Chinese citizens who live here. They are "simultaneously victimized by the long arm of a repressive state" and treated with "suspicion" by the British public as a result of the media's anti-Chinese rhetoric, according to Astrid Nordin, chair of Chinese International Relations at King's College London.
Rather than engage in political posturing, politicians should focus on building the government's capacity and knowledge on China, as well as provide stronger protections to transnational repression victims, Nordin said.
"If we're genuinely concerned about Chinese threats to our values, democratic systems and rule of law, the best thing we can do is to uphold those principles at home."
Yet experts say Beijing's attempts at shaping politics beyond its borders only appear to be growing. Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, told Nikkei that even if Beijing does not pose a massive security risk to Britain in the short term, the authoritarian regime is a systematic threat to wider democratic values.
"China does pose a national security threat, as Xi Jinping is committed to making the world safe for autocracies," Tsang said. "The longer-term risk is something that we should preempt and counter, before it becomes so urgent and huge that the cost to do so could become nearly prohibitively expensive."