America Pushes Allies to Fight Huawei in New Arms Race With China

Whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century

By David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, Raymond Zhong and Marc Santora

Huawei’s offices in Warsaw. Polish officials recently came under pressure from the United States to bar Huawei from building its 5G communications network.

Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign minister, arrived in Washington last week for a whirlwind of meetings dominated by a critical question: Should Britain risk its relationship with Beijing and agree to the Trump administration’s request to ban Huawei, China’s leading telecommunications producer, from building its next-generation computer and phone networks?
Britain is not the only American ally feeling the heat.

In Poland, officials are also under pressure from the United States to bar Huawei from building its fifth generation, or 5G, network. 

Trump officials suggested that future deployments of American troops — including the prospect of a permanent base labeled “Fort Trump” — could hinge on Poland’s decision.
And a delegation of American officials showed up last spring in Germany, where most of Europe’s giant fiber-optic lines connect and Huawei wants to build the switches that make the system hum. Their message: Any economic benefit of using cheaper Chinese telecom equipment is outweighed by the security threat to the NATO alliance.
Over the past year, the United States has embarked on a stealthy global campaign to prevent Huawei and other Chinese firms from participating in the most dramatic remaking of the plumbing that controls the internet since it sputtered into being, in pieces, 35 years ago.
The administration contends that the world is engaged in a new arms race — one that involves technology, rather than conventional weaponry, but poses just as much danger to America’s national security.
In an age when the most powerful weapons, short of nuclear arms, are cyber-controlled, whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.

The transition to 5G — already beginning in prototype systems in cities from Dallas to Atlanta — is likely to be more revolutionary than evolutionary. 

What consumers will notice first is that the network is faster — data should download almost instantly, even over cellphone networks.
It is the first network built to serve the sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices that will continuously feed each other vast amounts of data, allowing factories, construction sites and even whole cities to be run with less moment-to-moment human intervention. 

It will also enable greater use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence tools.
But what is good for consumers is also good for intelligence services and cyberattackers. 

The 5G system is a physical network of switches and routers. 

But it is more reliant on layers of complex software that are far more adaptable, and constantly updating, in ways invisible to users — much as an iPhone automatically updates while charging overnight. 

That means whoever controls the networks controls the information flow — and is able to change, reroute or copy data without users’ knowledge.
In interviews with current and former senior American government officials, intelligence officers and top telecommunications executives, it is clear that the potential of 5G has created a zero-sum calculus in the Trump White House — a conviction that there must be a single winner in this arms race, and the loser must be banished. 

For months, the White House has been drafting an executive order, expected in the coming weeks, that would effectively ban United States companies from using Chinese-origin equipment in critical telecommunications networks. 

That goes far beyond the existing rules, which ban such equipment only from government networks.
Nervousness about Chinese technology has long existed in the United States, fueled by the fear that the Chinese could insert a “back door” into telecom and computing networks that would allow Chinese security services to intercept military, government and corporate communications. 

And Chinese cyberintrusions of American companies and government entities have occurred daily, including by hackers working on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security.
But the concern has taken on more urgency as countries around the world begin deciding which equipment providers will build their 5G networks.
American officials say the old process of looking for “back doors” in equipment and software made by Chinese companies is the wrong approach, as is searching for ties between specific executives and the Chinese government. 

The bigger issue is the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, the fading line between independent business and the state and new laws that will give Beijing the power to look into and take over networks that companies like Huawei have helped build and maintain.
“It’s important to remember that Chinese company relationships with the Chinese government aren’t like private sector company relationships with governments in the West,” said William R. Evanina, the director of America’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center. 

“China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires Chinese companies to support, provide assistance and cooperate in China’s national intelligence work, wherever they operate.”
The White House’s focus on Huawei coincides with the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on China, which has involved sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, investment restrictions and the indictments of several Chinese nationals accused of hacking and cyberespionage. 

President Trump has accused China of “ripping off our country” and plotting to grow stronger at America’s expense.
President Trump’s views have prompted some countries to question whether America’s campaign is really about national security or if it is aimed at preventing China from gaining a competitive edge.
Administration officials see little distinction in those goals.
“President Trump has identified overcoming this economic problem as critical, not simply to right the balance economically, to make China play by the rules everybody else plays by, but to prevent an imbalance in political/military power in the future as well,” John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, told The Washington Times on Friday. 

“The two aspects are very closely tied together in his mind.”
The administration is warning allies that the next six months are critical. 

Countries are beginning to auction off radio spectrum for new, 5G cellphone networks and decide on multibillion-dollar contracts to build the underlying switching systems. 

This past week, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had concluded its first high-band 5G spectrum auction.
The Chinese government sees this moment as its chance to wire the world — especially European, Asian and African nations that find themselves increasingly beholden to Chinese economic power.
“This will be almost more important than electricity,” said Chris Lane, a telecom analyst in Hong Kong for Sanford C. Bernstein. 

“Everything will be connected, and the central nervous system of these smart cities will be your 5G network.”

Both the United States and China believe that whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.

A New Red Scare

American officials whisper that classified reports implicate Huawei in Chinese espionage but have produced none publicly. 

Others familiar with the secret case against the company say there is just a heightened concern about the firm’s rising technological dominance and the new Chinese laws that require Huawei to submit to requests from Beijing.

Australia last year banned Huawei and another Chinese manufacturer, ZTE, from supplying 5G equipment. 

Other nations are wrestling with whether to follow suit and risk inflaming China, which could hamper their access to the growing Chinese market and deprive them of cheaper Huawei products.
Government officials in places like Britain note that Huawei has already invested heavily in older-style networks.

And they argue that Huawei isn’t going away — it will run the networks of half the world, or more, and will have to be connected, in some way, to the networks of the United States and its allies.
Yet BT Group, the British telecom giant, has plans to rip out part of Huawei’s existing network. 

The company says that was part of its plans after acquiring a firm that used existing Huawei equipment; American officials say it came after Britain’s intelligence services warned of growing risks. 

And Vodafone Group, which is based in London, said on Friday that it would temporarily stop buying Huawei equipment for parts of its 5G network.
Nations have watched warily as China has retaliated against countries that cross it. 

In December, Canada arrested a top Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the United States. 

Meng, who is Ren’s daughter, has been accused of defrauding banks to help Huawei’s business evade sanctions against Iran. 

Since her arrest, China has detained two Canadian citizens and sentenced to death a third Canadian, who had previously been given 15 years in prison for drug smuggling.
“Europe is fascinating because they have to take sides,” said Philippe Le Corre, nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

“They are in the middle. All these governments, they need to make decisions. Huawei is everywhere.”

A Huawei store in Warsaw. This month, the Polish government made two high-profile espionage arrests, including an employee of Huawei.

Growing Suspicions
This month, the Polish government made two high-profile espionage arrests: a former intelligence official, Piotr Durbajlo, and Wang Weijing, an employee of Huawei. 

The arrests are the strongest evidence so far that links Huawei with spying activities.
Wang has been accused of working for Chinese intelligence agencies, said a top former Polish intelligence official. 

Wang was the handler of Durbajlo, who has helped the Chinese penetrate the Polish government’s most secure communications network.
The case was a prime example of how the Chinese government plants intelligence operatives inside Huawei’s vast global network. 

Those operatives have access to overseas communications networks and conduct espionage that the affected companies are not aware of, the official said.
Wang’s lawyer, Bartlomiej Jankowski, says his client has been caught up in a geopolitical tug of war between the United States and China.
American and British officials had already grown concerned about Huawei’s abilities after cybersecurity experts, combing through the company’s source code to look for back doors, determined that Huawei could remotely access and control networks from the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.
On careful examination, the code that Huawei had installed in its network-control software did not appear to be malicious. 

Nor was it hidden. 

It appeared to be part of a system to update remote networks and diagnose trouble. 

But it could also route traffic around corporate data centers — where firms monitor and control their networks — and its mere existence is now cited as evidence that hackers and Chinese intelligence use Huawei equipment to penetrate millions of networks.
Chinese telecommunications companies have also hijacked parts of the internet, rerouting basic traffic from the United States and Canada to China.
One academic paper, co-written by Chris C. Demchak, a Naval War College professor, outlined how traffic from Canada meant for South Korea was redirected to China for six months. 

That 2016 attack has been repeated and provides opportunity for espionage.
Last year, AT&T and Verizon stopped selling Huawei phones in their stores after Huawei begin equipping the devices with its own sets of computer chips — rather than relying on American or European manufacturers. 

The National Security Agency quietly raised alarms that with Huawei supplying its own parts, the Chinese company would control every major element of its networks. 

The N.S.A. feared it would no longer be able to rely on American and European providers to warn of any evidence of malware, spying or other covert action.

An assembly line at Huawei’s cellphone plant in Dongguan, China. The company has already surpassed Apple as the world’s second biggest cellphone provider.

The Rise of Huawei
In three decades, Huawei has transformed itself from a small reseller of low-end phone equipment into a global giant with a dominant position in one of the crucial technologies of the new century.
Last year, Huawei edged out Apple as the second-biggest provider of cellphones around the world. Richard Yu, who heads the company’s consumer business, said in Beijing several days ago that “even without the U.S. market we will be No. 1 in the world,” by the end of this year or sometime in 2020.
The company was founded in 1987 by Ren, a former People’s Liberation Army engineer who has become one of China’s most successful entrepreneurs.
The company started through imitation and theft of American technology. 

Cisco Systems sued Huawei in 2003, saying it had illegally copied the American company’s source code. 

The two companies settled out of court.
Huawei opened research centers (including one in California) and built alliances with leading universities around the world. 

Last year, it generated $100 billion in revenue, twice as much as Cisco and significantly more than IBM. 

Its ability to deliver well-made equipment at a lower cost than Western firms drove once-dominant players like Motorola and Lucent out of the telecom-equipment industry.
While American officials refuse to discuss it, the government snooping was a two-way street. 

As early as 2010, the N.S.A. secretly broke into Huawei’s headquarters, in an operation code-named “Shotgiant,” a discovery revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor now living in exile in Moscow.
Documents show that the N.S.A. was looking to prove that Huawei was controlled by the People’s Liberation Army — and that Ren never really left the powerful army unit. 

But the Snowden documents also show that the N.S.A. had another goal: to better understand Huawei’s technology and look for potential back doors. 

This way, when the company sold equipment to American adversaries, the N.S.A. would be able to target those nations’ computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if necessary, offensive cyberoperations.

President Trump met with Andrzej Duda, his Polish counterpart, last year. Mr. Duda has suggested that the United States build a $2 billion base and training area, which Mr. Duda only half-jokingly called “Fort Trump.”

A Global Campaign
After an uproar in 2013 about Huawei’s growing dominance in Britain, the country’s powerful Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary body, argued for banning Huawei, partly because of Chinese cyberattacks aimed at the British government. 

It was overruled, but Britain created a system to require that Huawei make its hardware and source code available to GCHQ, the country’s famous code-breaking agency.
In July, Britain’s National Cyber Security Center for the first time said publicly that questions about Huawei’s current practices and the complexity and dynamism of the new 5G networks meant it would be difficult to find vulnerabilities.
At roughly the same time, the N.S.A., at a series of classified meetings with telecommunications executives, had to decide whether to let Huawei bid for parts of the American 5G networks. 

AT&T and Verizon argued there was value in letting Huawei set up a “test bed” in the United States since it would have to reveal the source code for its networking software. 

Allowing Huawei to bid would also drive the price of building the networks down, they argued.
The director of the N.S.A. at the time, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, never approved the move and Huawei was blocked.
In July 2018, with these decisions swirling, Britain, the United States and other members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance met for their annual meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei and 5G networks were at the top of the agenda. They decided on joint action to try to block the company from building new networks in the West.
American officials are trying to make clear with allies around the world that the war with China is not just about trade but a battle to protect the national security of the world’s leading democracies and key NATO members.
On Tuesday, the heads of American intelligence agencies will appear before the Senate to deliver their annual threat assessment, and they are expected to cite 5G investments by Chinese telecom companies, including Huawei, as a threat.
In Poland, the message has quietly been delivered that countries that use Chinese telecommunications networks would be unsafe for American troops.
That has gotten Poland’s attention, given that its president, Andrzej Duda, visited the White House in September and presented a plan to build a $2 billion base and training area, which Mr. Duda only half-jokingly called “Fort Trump.”
Col. Grzegorz Malecki, now retired, who was the head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency in Poland, said it was understandable that the United States would want to avoid potentially compromising its troops.
“And control over the 5G network is such a potentially dangerous tool,” said Mr. Malecki, now board president of the Institute of Security and Strategy. 

“From Poland’s perspective, securing this troop presence outweighs all other concerns.”

China's isolation at the Shangri-La Dialogue

Britain, France Join U.S. in Responding to Chinese Intimidation and Coercion in South China Sea

By Patrick Goodenough

Ships and submarines participating in the biennial RIMPAC exercise in 2012. The Obama administration invited China to take part in 2014 and 2016, but the Pentagon has rescinded the invitation for the 2018 exercises. 

Britain and France are backing U.S.-led efforts to challenge what Defense Secretary James Mattis at the weekend called Chinese “intimidation and coercion” in the disputed South China Sea.
The two European defense ministers indicated in Singapore – where they and Mattis were taking part in the annual Shangri La security dialogue – that their navy ships will conduct “freedom of navigation” operations in the region in the coming days.
French armed forces minister Florence Parly said French and British ships would visit Singapore in the days ahead before “sailing together to certain areas.”
“I mean those areas where, at some point, a stern voice intrudes into the transponder, and tells us, sail away from supposedly territorial waters,” she continued. 

“But our commander then calmly replies that he will sail forth, because these – under international law – are indeed international waters.”
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, who spoke at the security event and addressed sailors onboard a Royal Navy frigate docked in Singapore, said Britain has sent three warships to the region, where their presence aims “to send the strongest of signals.”
“We believe that countries should play by the rules,” he said, stressing the importance of the “rules-based order.”
Like the U.S., France and Britain do not themselves have territorial claims in the resource-rich South China Sea, a vital thoroughfare for international trade.
As China has moved military assets to and around the islands, reefs and artificial islands it claims as Chinese, the U.S. has led the pushback.

China is engaged in disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei over resource-rich areas of the South China Sea, an area that includes some of the world’s most important shipping trade corridors. 

A recent U.S. “freedom of navigation” operation in the area saw two U.S. Navy warships sail within 12 nautical miles of islands claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan in the Paracel group. 

Their presence drew sharp criticism from Beijing although Vietnam, which accuses China of illegally occupying the islands, welcomed the U.S. move.
In response to steps taken by China to back up its territorial claims by deploying military assets, the Pentagon has rescinded an invitation to China to participate in a major international military exercise in the Pacific this summer.
While China is excluded from the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises – after participating in the last two at the invitation of the Obama administration – Vietnam has been invited to take part for the first time since they began in 1971.
Other participants among the 26 nations include several further countries locked in territorial disputes with China in the South and East China Seas, including Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

‘Much larger consequences’
Speaking at the security dialogue, which is hosted by the International Institute For Strategic Studies, Mattis had strong words for China.
He noted that Beijing has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, electronic jammers in the South China Sea and recently landed long-range bombers on an island in the Paracel group.
“Despite China’s claims to the contrary, the placement of these weapons systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion,” Mattis said, adding that it also contravened assurances Xi Jinping gave to the U.S. during a visit to the White House in 2015.
During a question-and-answer session Mattis described the decision to disinvite China from “the world’s largest naval exercise” as a “relatively small consequence” of its behavior, but warned there could be “much larger consequences in the future” if it continues down its path. 

He did not elaborate.
Militarizing features in the contested region, he said, is “not going to be endorsed in the world” and is not going to enhance China’s standing.
“There are consequences that will continue to come home to roost, so to speak, with China if they do not find the way to work more collaboratively with all of the nations who have interest” in the region.
Beijing’s defense ministry early this year invited Mattis to visit during the first half of the year, in what would be the first visit by a U.S. defense secretary in four years. 

Speaking to reporters as he flew home from Singapore, Mattis said he still planned to go to China, despite the tensions over the South China Sea.

Perfidious Albion

Britain is looking away as China tramples on the freedom of Hong Kong – and my father

By Angela Gui

Angela Gui: ‘My father’s case is only one out of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong.’ 

Iam too young to remember the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and its promise for the new world I would live in. 

But I have lived to see that promise trampled.
The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed to pave the way for the handover, was supposed to protect the people of Hong Kong from Chinese interference in their society and markets until 2047. 

Yet as the handover’s 20th anniversary approaches, China muscles in where it promised to tread lightly while Britain avoids eye contact.

Gui Minhai: the strange disappearance of a publisher who riled China's elite
As Xi Jinping has consolidated his grip on Chinese politics since he took office in 2013, Beijing has increasingly ignored the principle of “one country, two systems” on which the handover was based and actively eroded the freedoms this was supposed to guarantee.
In October 2015, my father Gui Minhai and his four colleagues were targeted and abducted by the agents of the Chinese Communist party for their work as booksellers and publishers. 

My father – a Swedish citizen – was taken while on holiday in Thailand, in the same place we’d spent Christmas together the year before. 

He was last seen getting into a car with a Mandarin-speaking man who had waited for him outside his holiday apartment. 

Next, his friend and colleague Lee Bo was abducted from the Hong Kong warehouse of Causeway Bay Books, which they ran together. 

Lee Bo is legally British and, like any Hong Konger, his freedom of expression should have been protected by the terms of 1997.
Their only “crime” had been to publish and sell books that were critical of the central Chinese government. 

So paranoid is Beijing about its public image, that it chooses to carry out cross-border kidnappings over some books. 

Causeway Bay Books specialised in publications that were banned on the mainland but legal in Hong Kong. 

The store’s manager, Lam Wing-kee, who was taken when travelling to Shenzhen, has described Causeway Bay Books “a symbol of resistance”. 

In spite of Hong Kong’s legal freedoms of speech and of the press the store is now closed because all its people have been abducted or bullied away. 

Other Hong Kong booksellers are picking “politically sensitive” titles off their shelves in the fear that they may be next; the next brief headline, the next gap in a family like my own.
I continue to live with my father’s absence – his image, messages from his friends, the cause he has become. 

Turning 53 this year, he spent a second birthday in a Chinese prison. 

Soon he will have spent two years in detention without access to a lawyer, Swedish consular officials, or regular contact with his family.
My father’s case is only one of many that illustrate the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong. 

Earlier this year, Canadian businessman Xiao Jianhua – who had connections to the Chinese political elite – disappeared from a Hong Kong hotel and later resurfaced on the mainland. 

In last year’s legislative council elections, six candidates were barred from running because of their political stance. 

The two pro-independence candidates who did end up getting elected were prevented from taking office. 

If “intolerable political stance” is now a valid excuse for barring LegCo candidates, then it won’t be long before the entire Hong Kong government is reduced to a miniature version of China’s.
The Joint Declaration was meant to guarantee that no Hong Kong resident would have to fear a “midnight knock on the door”. 

The reality at present is that what happened to my father can happen to any Hong Kong resident the mainland authorities wish to silence or bring before their own system of “justice”. 

Twenty-one years ago, John Major pledged that Britain would continue to defend the freedoms granted to Hong Kong by the Joint Declaration against its autocratic neighbour. 

Today, instead of holding China to its agreement, Britain glances down at its shoes and mumbles about the importance of trade. 

It is as if the British government wants to forget all about the promise it made to the people of Hong Kong. 

But China’s crackdown on dissent has made it difficult for Hong Kongers to forget.
Theresa May often emphasises the importance of British values in her speeches. 

But Britain’s limpness over Hong Kong seems to demonstrate only how easily these values are compromised away. 

I worry about the global implications of China being allowed to just walk away from such an important treaty. 

And I worry that in the years to come, we will have many more Lee Bos and Gui Minhais, kidnapped and detained because their work facilitated free speech. 

Hong Kong’s last governor, Lord Patten, has repeatedly argued that human rights issues can be pushed without bad effects on trade. 

Germany, for example, has shown that this is entirely possible, with Angela Merkel often publicly criticising China’s human rights record. 

With a potentially hard Brexit around the bend, a much reduced Britain will need a world governed by the rule of law. 

How the government handles its responsibilities to Hong Kong will be decisive in shaping the international character of the country that a stand-alone Britain will become. 

I for one hope it will be a country that honours its commitments and that stands up to defend human rights.

Imperial Dream

South China Sea Isn't China's Own Sea
By Panos Mourdoukoutas

The South China Sea isn't China's own sea. 

It's an international sea open to all commercial and military vessels.
That's the message America and its naval allies, France, Japan, and Britain are prepared to send to Beijing, according to a recent Chinatopix.com report. 

"Japan and the United States are worried by China's efforts to exercise unilateral control over the South China Sea, a concern shared by France, which controls several Pacific islands, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia."
Financial markets in the region do not seem that concerned, at least for now, focusing on the economic fundamentals rather than the geopolitics of the region.
China considers the waterway its own sea, and is building artificial islands, defying international tribunal rulings, though Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte isn't prepared to stop Beijing --Philippines is the country that won an international tribunal ruling against China.
Meanwhile four mighty allied navies are planning a joint exercise as a "show of force" against China's ambitions in South China Sea and beyond.
The exercise comes a few months after an intense exchange of blunt messages between China on the one side and Taiwan and Japan on the other.
Last December, Taiwan’s defense minister Feng Shih-kuan told Taiwan Central News Agency that the island’s forces are ready do fend off any military challenge by Mainland China. 

 "The enemy's threats are increasingly expanding," said Shih-kuan as he issued out orders for the military to step up training exercises. 

"We must always maintain combat preparedness."
Meanwhile, Japan sent its own blunt diplomatic message to Beijing by changing the name of its Taiwanese representative office from 'The Interchange Association' to 'Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association'. 

That means Tokyo comes a step closer of recognizing Taiwan as a separate nation, drawing an angry response from Beijing.
A month earlier, China told Japan’s close ally, America, to stay away from its “own” South China Sea, as three China Coast Guard vessels entered Japanese waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, according to the Japan Coast Guard.
About the same time, China sent a separate message to Washington, in the form of a naval force demonstration, which had another recipient, too – Taiwan -- as group of Chinese warships that included the country’s only aircraft carrier made their way to the South China Sea after passing south of Taiwan in a “routine” exercise.
And there’s China’s warning to Japan last June, when Beijing told Japan “not to send Self-Defense Forces to join U.S. operations that test the freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea,” according to a Japan Times editorial.
While it is almost certain that the show of military power by the allied naval forces will draw angry protests from China, it may tame Beijing’s ambitions to control the South China Sea, and give peace another chance.
Investors should keep a close eye on the ongoing disputes in the region, as accidents can and do happen, taking financial markets for a wild ride.

A plea to Britain: don’t forget Tibet in your dealings with China

Britain has a fine history of upholding the democratic values of our fine country. It must do once again as it negotiates business and trade ties with Beijing
By Lobsang Sangay

When it comes to its dealings with China, the UK is at a critical juncture. 

Following the Brexit vote, the debate on Chinese investment in Britain, and unfavourable media coverage of Xi Jinping’s lavish reception last year, the challenge for the British leadership now is to develop a new strategic engagement with Beijing. 

It is vital in doing so that the UK stands its ground, alongside other like-minded governments, and promotes an approach that balances its business, trade and diplomatic interests with a respect for the rights of the Chinese and Tibetan people. 

It must hold fast to its commitment to upholding the democratic values that shape the spirit of this great country.
I have recently been elected to serve a second term as the sikyong, or political leader, of the Central Tibetan Administration, based in exile in India. 

Our democracy, which is a source of great pride among Tibetans everywhere, was a culmination of the vision and actions of His Holiness the Dalai Lama – who has emphasised the importance of democracy and education since his escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959.
Britain has been an inspiration to Tibetans not only as one of the world’s oldest democracies and a bastion of free speech, but also because of its has a special relationship to Tibet. 

Prior to the Chinese invasion in 1949, Britain was the only country to formally recognise Tibet as an independent nation. 

This is because British representatives were stationed in Lhasa from 1904 to 1947 to liaise with the Tibetan government. 

In 1949 Mao Zedong, the newly victorious leader of the Chinese Communist party, announced over the radio waves his intention to “liberate” Tibet from this “foreign imperialism”. 

Over the past 60-plus years, of course, Tibet has been anything but “liberated” by the Chinese Communist party.
In 2008, Britain rewrote the historical record on Tibet. 

An apologetic statement by the then foreign secretary David Miliband stated that Britain now recognised Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China, after almost a century of recognising Tibet as “autonomous”, with China having a “special position” there.
This was a major shift in position, and signalled the beginning of a more accommodating stance. 

But it only led China to push for more concessions, limiting the UK’s leverage still further. 

After David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in 2012, China subjected him to censure, consigning him to the diplomatic deep freeze. 

Last year, the UK’s red carpet reception of Xi was widely criticised, with sinologists pointing out that standing up to China is not only preferable for moral reasons but is also in the interests of Britain’s economy and national security.
How much better, instead of struggling in the face of China’s efforts to divide and rule, if those governments that China coerces stood shoulder to shoulder, bound by their common values. 

Failing to do so only endorses China’s efforts to impose its narrative on the rest of the world – a discourse that is anti-democratic, in which the law is viewed as a tool to maintain power and not to achieve justice, and one that is hostile to any views that do not accord with the official party line. 

The need for such a joined-up approach is becoming ever more urgent – regardless of Brexit – as the Chinese government continues to oversee an unprecedented crackdown on basic human rights and civil society, and steps up its efforts to subvert and undermine the values of western democracies.
In Tibet, China asserts its control through policies of intensified militarisation, hyper-securitisation, enhanced surveillance and ideological campaigns. 

Given Tibet’s importance as the “roof of the world”, source of most of Asia’s major rivers and epicentre of climate change, this should be of profound concern to us all. 

China’s disregard for fundamental freedoms is demonstrated in the continuing large-scale demolitions at the internationally renowned Tibetan Buddhist institute Larung Gar – the largest Buddhist academy in the world.
In recent months we have seen two initiatives where governments have joined together to tackle China about major issues of concern; the first a letter signed by four governments and the EU, telling China that its new laws on cyber-security, counter-terrorism and control of foreign NGOs go too far, and an unprecedented joint statement by 12 governments at the United Nations human rights council, criticising China over its detention of lawyers and disappearances of Hong Kong booksellers.
As China seeks to bend the rest of the world to its anti-democratic principles, such collective statements can only be in the interests of the UK and other European nations, as well as serving the Chinese and Tibetan people who struggle for peaceful reform of a one-party state.
British people are among the most staunch supporters of our Tibetan cause; tens of thousands of them joyfully sang happy birthday to the Dalai Lama at Glastonbury last year. 

So many have expressed their profound sadness at the unprecedented wave of self-immolations that has swept Tibet since 2009 – a terrible act that is testimony to often unbearable oppression as well as an expression of the desire for freedom, and for the Dalai Lama to return home.
As new alignments form and the ramifications of Brexit become clearer, it is time for a re-evaluation of Britain’s engagement with China. 

There may have been a change in language on Tibet, but the historical and cultural connection between the British people and Tibetans is irrefutable.
The UK should take a leading role in reaching out to other like-minded governments, to act together from a position of strength to confront the Chinese leadership. 

A united front can be used to push for a meaningful dialogue based on the Central Tibetan Administration’s middle way approach to resolve the longstanding issue of Tibet. 

It cannot allow Brexit to distract or damage relationships with other EU nations that will be needed if change is to be secured.