Chinese attempts to spy on and destabilise Britain have grown, but Beijing remains a vital economic partner, a government audit concludes.
  • john_brown [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    45·
    2 days ago

    It said that “instances of China’s espionage, interference in our democracy and the undermining of our economic security have increased in recent years”.

    This is vague because they can’t actually come up with any specific acts to “interfere” with their “democracy”.

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      25·
      2 days ago

      our democracy

      Says the USian province with multiple hereditary ruling positions and which - as all of NATO - is reliant on having (neo-)colonies the people of which are denied any sort of input on how NATO de facto rules them.

        • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          12·
          2 days ago

          Liberal monarchists will claim that the king is actually super democratic because he’s there to protect democracy. If the democratically elected government were ever to do something authoritarian the king would simply say “No!” and restore democracy.

          This is what monarchists actually believe, I swear.

    • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
      18·
      2 days ago

      The “interference” is probably something something, TikTok, something something

    • EnsignRedshirt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      2 days ago

      It’s funny hearing elected officials talk about election interference. Like, you won the election, would you have lost otherwise? Is China responsible for getting Kier Starmer elected? What is the consequence of this election interference?

      With Russiagate there was this unserious but emotionally satisfying idea that Russia somehow tipped the scales in favor of Trump, who presumably would not have been elected otherwise (lmao). But like, what’s the argument in the UK, or Canada? Where is the actual interference? What do they think China is trying to do? Why?

    • pinkapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      The what now? That’s not a job for China. Invading to depose the brutal regime of Charles and restore demuhcrasee is only for the good ol US of A.

      Seriously calling their surreal bicameral system where one house are actual landed aristocrats “democracy” and not crappy almost-republican monarchy is misinformation. Don’t get me started on the endless list of medieval crap they maintain as lifelong paid professions with some bizarre paragovernmental authority like guardian of the king’s underpants and stuff like that.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    2 days ago

    Their attempts to destabilise our country included very reasonable trade deals, essentially funding our university system via very high fees for Chinese students, offering to modernise our internet/cell infrastructure, and an infrastructure deal on nuclear power.

    Then the US engineered Brexit, cooked up the Xinjiang “genocide” bullshit, and whipped us into line.

    We reneged on various deals, cancelled internet/cell and nuclear infrastructure, started treating Chinese postgrads like spies, screamed ‘genocide’ without evidence, cooked up elaborate conspiracy theories about foreign police stations, blamed China for COVID while we killed hundreds of thousands of our own citizens and robbed the public purse for hundreds of billions in corrupt contracts, all while working with the Americans to actually destabilise China and sanction their politicians.