Communist China’s growing use of authoritarian measures within technology, international markets, and diplomacy poses a threat to the entire world, the head of the UK signals intelligence branch has said.
Sir Jeremy Fleming of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has claimed that an ever more powerful and fearful Communist China is utilising its power to either coerce or crush perceived opposition both nationally and internationally in what he describes as a “threat to us all”.
Intelligence services and politicians in both the UK and US have become ever more hawkish on the issue of Chinese power in recent months, with the FBI and MI5 issuing a rare joint warning earlier this year about the threat posed by Chinese spies.
This rhetoric hit a new level on Tuesday, with Sir Jeremy warning that the Chinese desire to control economies, nations and people using their ever-advancing technology now posed a serious threat to the entire world.
“We and our like-minded allies see technology as a way to enable greater freedoms, greater prosperity,” he remarked during a lecture given to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. “But the Chinese leadership’s approach is to also see it as a tool to gain advantage through control — of their markets, of those in their sphere of influence, and of their own citizens.”
“The Chinese leadership believes it draws its strength, its authority, from the closed, one-party system,” he continued. “They seek to secure their advantage through scale and through control.”
“This means they see opportunities to control the Chinese people rather than looking for ways to support and unleash the potential of their citizens. They see nations as either potential adversaries or potential client states, to be threatened, bribed or coerced.”
As a result, the UK spymaster said that China — which has managed to gain significant power in the technological sphere — “could represent a threat to us all“, and that the UK and its allies must invest heavily in maintaining their “future strategic tech advantage” so as to be able to overcome the potential future threat.
Ultimately, Fleming argued that the growing threat posed by the Chinese had left the world at a “sliding doors moment in history”, where the future will be determined by the strategic response of those allied against the Communist state.
While Sir Jeremy maintained an extremely concerned tone in regard to the future danger posed by the Chinese state throughout the lecture, he seemed slightly less concerned about Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to whom he attributed a wide range of strategic blunders too.
Describing Putin’s own decision-making as being “flawed”, the UK intelligence expert said that Russia’s gains in the Ukraine war have been “reversed”, and that the cost has been “staggering” both to the country and its people.
Ultimately, he said that Russia was “running out” of resources, both in terms of munitions and manpower, claiming that the Russian public are beginning to see how Putin had badly “misjudged” the entire situation.
However, when probed on the possibility of whether the UK and Europe could also run out of munitions as a result of this conflict — a possibility that has reportedly worried some experts — Sir Jeremy appeared to ignore the question entirely, opting instead to address the possibility of whether or not Russia could end up using nuclear weapons in the conflict.
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