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For years, the West has been stuck in a never-ending and self-defeating spiral when it comes to downplaying or even ignoring existential threats to our civilization. Radical Islam is dismissed under the banner of multiculturalism, and any critics of its spread throughout the West are deemed Islamophobic; energy policy must unquestionably be dictated by a deranged Swedish teenager, and any critics of said deranged Swedish teenager are deemed anti-autistic or something; and then there’s the ultimate threat: China.
Of course, it’s true that our leaders engage in sporadic acts of saber-rattling, delivering impassioned speeches about American values, launching press releases condemning aggression, and even imposing the occasional symbolic sanction or tariff (usually when an election is on the horizon, of course). But when it comes down to it, when it actually matters, when there is a clear, tangible opportunity to say no to China, we fold like a suit your aunt bought for you on Temu for $4.25.
The latest example is almost too perfect in its absurdity: The U.K. government under the leadership of Labour Party buffoon Keir Starmer is going to approve a massive new Chinese Embassy in London despite explicit warnings from British intelligence that the site would be impossible to secure, warning that “it was not realistic to expect to be able wholly to eliminate each and every potential risk” associated with the building.
I’m sorry, what? Yes, the intelligence services of a nuclear-armed Western democracy and key U.S. ally are openly acknowledging that they cannot protect themselves from the Chinese spying this building would enable … and the British government went through with it anyway! It’s like going into a Mexican restaurant, being told by the chef to avoid the shrimp chimichangas, and then ordering five of them. Honestly, this could make an amazing script for a new James Bond movie, if Hollywood had the guts to make anti-China movies anymore.
Now, to preempt the inevitable COVID-era hysteria over “anti-Asian hate” whenever someone dares criticize the Chinese government: This isn’t about paranoia, or xenophobia, or hating Chinese people. No, it’s about finally recognizing the reality that the Chinese state is our primary geopolitical adversary, and pretending otherwise is no longer merely naïve — it is reckless.
The Chinese Communist Party does not behave like a normal Western government. It’s not like France or Japan or Australia. It doesn’t share our respect for free markets, law, or civil society. The CCP, like the communist regime that it is, views anything we value as a vulnerability, co-opting every institution — indeed, everything — as part of the goals of the state. And yet, somehow, we always act as if China will stop doing what it has been doing for decades, like this time the lion won’t eat you if you smother yourself in catnip and climb into its cage.
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No, this embassy, this academic partnership, this land purchase won’t be different, because it’s never different.
After all, it’s not like China’s global strategy is subtle. They openly combine industrial espionage, political influence operations, cyber warfare, and economic coercion as part of a single, coherent government project that Western policymakers just pretend doesn’t exist.
Take espionage — beyond mega-embassies in the center of London — as another classic example, with a constant effort to gain a foothold of influence and compromise Western politicians — Eric Swalwell, Fang Fang is on the line. And the problem doesn’t stop there.
For some reason — cash — Western governments have actively encouraged the import of CCP-backed students into our most sensitive academic and scientific institutions. This has been sold as warm-and-fuzzy openness and collaboration, but in reality, it has often functioned as a pipeline for intellectual property extraction. Put simply: theft. Research funded by Western taxpayers in areas like materials science, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence flows straight back to a regime that has made IP theft a cornerstone of its economic model.
But spies aren’t just doing some good ol’ fashioned stealing. They’re also engaging in psychological warfare, such as Chinese students at British universities who were being “pressured to spy on their classmates in an attempt to suppress the discussion of issues that are sensitive to the Chinese government” last year. But sure, give them a spy base in London, what could possibly go wrong?
The same dynamic applies to land and infrastructure. Chinese entities, often with opaque ties to the state, have been allowed to purchase farmland, energy assets, and properties near sensitive military or communications sites across the Western world. These deals are waved through under the banner of “foreign investment,” even when they carry obvious national-security implications that would be rejected if any other enemy in history attempted it.
Imagine selling American farmland to the Soviet Union during the Cold War…
Then there’s technology and influence, of which there is no better example than TikTok. A platform used by hundreds of millions of Westerners, including children, is ultimately subject to the authority of the CCP, since Chinese law requires companies to cooperate with state intelligence services, meaning that there is no firewall between TikTok’s data and the Chinese state.
Yet, every attempt to treat this as the national security threat that it plainly is, is met with shrugs, whataboutism, or accusations of overreaction — including Donald Trump’s illegal decision to ignore Congress and its vote to ban TikTok — all while a “deal” to sell the U.S.- based part of TikTok to some majority-American conglomerate of investors keeps Chinese fingers deep in the pie of TikTok through its propaganda-pushing algorithm. And unless we comb through every line of code, we must assume that the CCP wants to keep its eye on the real prize: data — windows into the minds of millions of young Americans.
So, to recap, not only are we letting China build spy centers in the heart of our cities, copy our technology, and take over our educational institutions, we are simultaneously allowing an adversarial regime to shape information flows, cultural trends, and political discourse. But as long as friends of the Trump administration make a bundle, I suppose it’s all fine…
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Meanwhile, the human cost of the CCP’s rule is treated as an inconvenient afterthought, with a human rights record that is beyond brutal. The mass detention and forced labor of Uyghur Muslims, the destruction of civil liberties in Hong Kong, the surveillance state imposed on its own citizens, powered by facial recognition and social credit systems that would make George Orwell implode: all central to understanding how the regime operates and how it would behave if given greater leverage over us.
Which brings us to Taiwan.
China’s threat to Taiwan is not just a regional dispute, but a direct threat to the global economy and the future of advanced technology. Taiwan sits at the heart of the world’s semiconductor supply chain, and these chips are essential for everything from consumer electronics to military systems and, crucially, to the development of artificial intelligence — the industry that is keeping the U.S. economy afloat.
If China were to seize Taiwan, as it is constantly threatening and positioning to do, it would gain unprecedented control over the foundational infrastructure of the modern world. AI, defense, and communications would all be vulnerable to further coercion by an authoritarian state that has already shown its contempt for freedom and international norms.
And still, we bury our heads in the sand while opening the door to China buying our advanced chips, which they will obviously copy and replicate themselves, and we’re supposed to be thankful that Trump’s federal government gets a cut?
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China keeps on doing its thing, and we keep on ignoring it. So, what can we do? Well, we can start by doing the obvious: no more mega-embassies that our own intelligence services say cannot be secured, no more pretending that every Chinese investment is innocent, no more turning our universities into open-source research arms for an adversarial state, no more allowing platforms controlled by the CCP to dominate our information ecosystem, and no more handing China the controls to our food supply.
The tragedy is that none of this requires radical new thinking. All that it requires is political courage. The courage to say that access to Western markets, institutions, and cities is a privilege, not a right: the courage to prioritize national security over short-term economic gains; and the courage to finally acknowledge what has been obvious for years: China is not a misunderstood partner, but an enemy.
And not just an enemy, but our greatest enemy. An enemy we not only trade with, but have also tied ourselves to. The longer we keep ignoring the truth, the more we guarantee that the costs, economic, technological, and moral, will be paid not by the politicians making these decisions, but by the generations in the not-too-distant future they claim to care so much about.
Ian Haworth is a syndicated columnist. Follow him on X (@ighaworth) or Substack.