Part 1: When commerce conquers conservation

‘Chinagate’ and British impotence

On a grey September morning in 2025, two men walked away from modern Britain’s potentially defining espionage trial. Christopher Cash, parliamentary researcher and Director of the (China-sanctioned) China Research Group and Christopher Berry, English teacher with extensive Chinese connections, had just eluded allegations of being Beijing intelligence agents.

No court vindication. Simply China’s prolonged, persistent and astonishingly effective perseverance against Western Democracy’s spineless acquiescence.

The case against:

The prosecution appeared bulletproof. Investigators claimed evidence of sensitive data passed, for instance, to Cai Qi, known as Xi Jinping’s “unofficial Chief of Staff”. Cash himself had told Berry, “You’re in spy territory now”. Prosecutors had referred to the case as “slam-dunk”.

And yet Whitehall was to see complete capitulation. Despite months of requests, no minister would testify to China's menace. While Downing Street acknowledged “challenges and threats posed by China,” officials studiously avoided anything resembling “enemy”—as per the 1911 Official Secrets Act— fearing for Britain’s £90 billion annual trade with Beijing.

That countless former intelligence chiefs repeatedly and publicly branded Beijing hostile to British interests makes the government’s position staggering. And the CPS’s refusal to call alternative witnesses suggests either breathtaking legal incompetence or deliberate political sabotage.

The government’s calculation became explicit in late October when Treasury Counsel Tom Little told the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy that he took “the extraordinary step” of speaking directly with deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins because he “could not understand why what he said was a relatively straightforward piece of evidence—namely, that China was an active and ongoing threat—had not been provided.” The admission confirmed what intelligence officials had suspected: the government possessed the evidence prosecutors required but chose not to provide it. More damning still, Collins revealed in parliamentary testimony that on 1 September—just two days before the case collapsed—he attended a Whitehall meeting chaired by the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, where officials discussed “a variety of scenarios” regarding how the trial “could harm UK-China relationship” and “how we would address them.” Days later, the case was abandoned.

Christine Lee infiltration

Chinagate did not unfold in isolation. Birmingham solicitor Christine Lee lost her legal challenge against MI5’s 2022 ‘interference alert’ identifying her as Beijing’s United Front Work Department agent. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled MI5 had acted lawfully when warning that Lee was “knowingly engaged in political interference activities”: cultivating relationships within Parliament; establishing the All-Party Parliamentary Chinese in Britain Group; pay-outs to political parties. MP Barry Gardiner received over £420,000 from Lee, championing the part-China-funded Hinkley Point C nuclear project.

Subtle infiltration, rather than crude espionage.

Jonathan Powell influence

In March 2024, months before his appointment as National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell – dubbed by Westminster insiders the real Foreign Secretary, such was his diplomatic dominance – conducted “in-depth dialogue” with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, described by US intelligence as a Communist Party front: co-opting subnational governments, pressurising Western leaders, connected to the same Cai Qi who allegedly received data from Cash and Berry.

By the time Whitehall discussed trial-implications for Anglo-China relations, Powell’s influence proved decisive.

Matthew Collins scapegoating

Meanwhile Matthew Collins, his Deputy, had given three witness statements between December 2023 and August 2025 – notably diluted after Starmer’s appointment, creating a surreal impression of schizophrenia.

On the one hand documenting Beijing’s “large-scale espionage operations against the UK”, “persistent and increasingly more covert to avoid detection,” the “biggest state-based threat” to the UK’s economic security which had “highly likely compromised” the UK’s Electoral Commission in an “epoch defining and systemic challenge to the UK”, Collins simultaneously emphasised the UK’s commitment to “pursuing a positive relationship with China to strengthen understanding, cooperation and stability” in wording strikingly resembling Labour’s election manifesto.

Coincidence? Or was he leaving us a breadcrumb trail about political pressure he faced?

Ministers praised Collins as “faithfully [carrying] out his job,” with “full freedom” to engage without political input. And yet former Security Minister Tom Tugendhat—who earned Chinese sanctions for his criticism of Beijing—accused the government of “throwing Matt Collins under the bus”.

After such compromise, Collins’ evidence was insufficient to meet prosecution thresholds.

The AUKUS paradox

The AUKUS pact of September 2021 between Australia, the US and UK in response to contested waters around China heralded unprecedented sharing of nuclear submarine resources and the most significant Western military response to China since the Cold War: involving quantum technologies, artificial intelligence and hypersonic weapons. Beijing’s fierce response, including sustained diplomatic campaigns, indicates the perceived threat to its regional ambitions.

Britain was committing billions and its most sensitive nuclear development to counter Chinese military expansion whilst claiming doubts about any Beijing danger.

Dominic Cummings allegations

Enter Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser and his claims about Chinese espionage. Dominic Cummings said that in 2020 he and Johnson sat aghast, as the Cabinet Secretary explained Beijing had obtained “vast amounts” of the highest “intelligence services material” and “National Security Secretariat”—including STRAP—documentation, over years: information so sensitive that disclosure could constitute criminal offences, potentially “extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control.”

China had reportedly acquired classified communications including from Whitehall to Special Branch (the Scotland Yard unit responsible for investigating espionage) thus acquiring access into Britain’s counterintelligence, including investigations into Chinese spying itself; if true, effectively allowing the world’s most sophisticated cyber-espionage to observe Britain’s monitoring of its own operations. Cummings described the briefing as “so bizarre” that attendees “were looking around” in disbelief.

But there was more: “officials from the Cabinet Office then went round telling everybody in the meeting that it was illegal for them to discuss this with the media”. Cock-up followed by cover-up.

The Cabinet Office called Cummings’ claims “untrue,” while former National Cyber Security Centre chief Ciaran Martin expressed skepticism. But Cummings insisted “many people know what I’m saying is true,” and offered to share details with parliamentary inquiries.

As he summarised: “There’s been a political choice made in this country to prioritise Chinese money over security against China.”

The deadlock:

“Grey Zone” warfare

Chinese military strategists call it ‘unrestricted warfare’. Formalised in People’s Liberation Army doctrine, refined through Beijing’s ‘Three Warfares’ and described by Sun Tzu’s as being to ‘subdue the enemy without fighting’, it is known as grey zone tactics and carefully calibrated to stop short of justifying a military response.

What makes grey zone warfare so devastating is its cumulative nature. Each individual action appears manageable, even trivial. Collectively, lawfare—the exploitation of Western due process— cripples democratic responses to hostility, in substance if not form, while the West dithers over whether minor provocation warrants major escalation.

Resulting in strategic paralysis disguised as sophisticated statecraft.