Transparency will convince the world China is a friend

located a stone’s throw from where this latest outbreak began. Successive US administrations have long believed that a number of countries, including China, maintain active biological programmes. But without greater Chinese transparency we cannot be completely sure.

China’s immediate response to the outbreak in Wuhan was to squash the story. The Chinese doctor who first raised the alarm was obliged to publicly retract his comments and charged with “rumour mongering”. The Party machine attempted to cover up the original seven cases. Local, regional and national authorities, fully aware of the growing dangers of contagion, issued orders to suppress the news. Consequently five million people were free to depart the city before a quarantine was finally imposed three weeks later.

China has form. In 2002 the Communist Party sat on the SARS outbreak for 88 days, allowing the virus to spread to 36 countries, before informing the World Health Organisation.

It’s a stark reminder that, behind the dazzle of China’s meteoritic modernisation, fuelled by its incredible economic growth, is a Communist Party machine demanding complete obedience from every corner of Chinese society – including scientists who simply seek the truth.

China’s reaction to this unfolding tragedy, coupled with the security debate over Huawei’s participation in our 5G telecoms roll-out, has helped shine light on a country that we so want to welcome on the global stage, hoping it will gradually embrace Western values – but instead is yielding its accumulating power to pursue a very different world vision. Over the next decade it will challenge the US’s dominance militarily, technologically and economically. Already it is wielding its autocratic dominance well beyond China’s shores.

Over here, the UK Government embarks on the most significant review of Britain’s place in the world for a generation. A timely opportunity to assess the threats we face, the aspirational role we seek to play on the global stage and the subsequent defence posture we must adapt. The review must include a sober assessment of rising China. Its growing global dominance is now so significant it is mentioned in the third paragraph of page one in the US government’s recent Defence Review.

This is because President Xi, now arguably more powerful than Chairman Mao, is on a mission.

Two decades ago, China’s defence budget matched the UK’s. Today it is five times larger and outstrips Russia. Its navy grows the size of ours every year. Its army, the largest in the world, yet untested in battle, is modernising with a steady procurement of state-ofthe-art equipment. Space is now seen as fighting domain. China has developed a rival to the US-owned GPS system and is launching armed satellites capable of orbiting other satellites.

Technologically, state-funded pump priming of a select group of tech giants is securing China’s global dominance in artificial intelligence, digital technology and telecoms.

The offer to share this technology combined with its enormous infrastructure loan programmes has helped lure a growing number of countries into accepting China’s influence and control.

China’s military is now too large to confront directly but President Xi is not looking for a conventional fight. He knows his Sun Tzu; to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. So, he invests in the grey one of conflict cyber, information and yes genetics and biotechnology.

Left unchecked Chinese geopolitical influence will extend far beyond the norms of currently recognised international standards – plausibly splitting the world into two spheres of influence.

China’s growth is not unconditional but reliant on continual global trade.

Greater Western resolve is required to stand our ground, defend our values, to prevent a dangerous bipolar world. The UK has a leading role to play, beginning by seeking greater transparency over the origins of the coronavirus.

Behind the dazzle of China’s meteoric modernisation is a Communist Party machine demanding total obedience

Tobias Ellwood MP is chairman of the defence select committee