The new UK government has been urged to launch a “10 Trillion Initiative” to mitigate the possible economic impact that could result from a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
In an article titled The UK and China: A Call for Cross-Party Consensus published on the Royal United Services Institute’s Web site, Bob Seely and Jaya Pathak called for the new British government to plan for the worst by implementing the initiative.
The goal was to “give due priority to addressing real and developing risks in the region, together with international partners,” they said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Seely is a former Conservative Party member of parliament and is perceived as a hardliner toward China, said the institute, which is the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defense and security think tank.
Pathak has been a member of the Executive Committee at the Labour Campaign for International Development since 2020.
The Labour Party won a landslide victory to take control of parliament from the Conservatives, who had been in power for 14 years.
The 10 Trillion Initiative was based on an estimate by Bloomberg Economics, which recently said that an escalation of tensions across the Taiwan Strait could cost the world economy about US$10 trillion, the authors said.
“This isn’t someone else’s problem. This would hit the pockets of the UK taxpayer five times harder than the Ukraine conflict,” the article said.
“De-risking means that the UK must plan for the worst. Implementing a 10 Trillion Initiative would aim to give due priority to addressing real and developing risks in the region, together with international partners,” it said.
The initiative must include assessing and disclosing the UK’s exposure to a shock in the Taiwan Strait, raising awareness of Taiwan’s irreplaceable position at the heart of the global chip supply chain and coming up with a military and defense cooperation plan, the authors said.
It must also include efforts to work with international partners on a coordinated deterrence package that would be triggered in the event of a maritime and air blockade or other escalations in cross-strait tensions, they added.
The authors said it is “very worrying” that voters barely heard the China issue mentioned in the UK’s general election campaign, although they attributed that to the old adage that “foreign policy doesn’t win elections.”
All the major parties in the UK made some reference to China in their manifestos amid varying shades of skepticism, but they made no serious attempt to explain the increasing link between foreign policy and domestic policy, the authors said.
“This is despite the fact that the UK’s posture toward China is likely to determine the country’s prosperity and the health of its institutions to a very great extent over the next 15 years,” they said. “We have reached a point where China policy isn’t only — or even mainly — a foreign policy question.”
“Confronting the biggest policy issue in a generation is not an option, but an unavoidable responsibility for the new prime minister,” the two said. “Let’s ensure that short-termism and partisanship doesn’t prevent him from meeting the challenge.”
The authors also said the UK should pass a “Democracy Defence Act” to build resilience against ever-increasing interference and influence, building on the success of the National Security and Investment Act 2023.
They also said the government must place China in the “Enhanced Tier” of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.
The scheme is designed to strengthen the resilience of the British political system against covert foreign influence and “provide greater assurance around the activities of certain foreign powers or entities that are a national security risk,” the scheme’s factsheet said.
A review of the resources was provided to British intelligence agencies, which allows them to have the ability to detect and confront the pervasive influence of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, must be reviewed, the authors said.
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