Don’t sell your soul to China, trade adviser tells businesses

Businesses and unis have been guilty of naivety and ‘a degree of greed’ in accepting funding from China, says Tony Abbott.

Ex Australian PM Tony Abbott has been hired by British PM Boris Johnson to become President of the UK's Board of Trade. He will hold the title jointly with UK Trade Secretary Liz Truss.

Businesses and universities have been guilty of naivety and “a degree of greed” in accepting funding from China, Tony Abbott, the former Australian prime minister who is now a British government trade adviser, has said.

Abbott, who is on the Board of Trade [part of the Department of International Trade], urged business and academic leaders to show “character” and refuse funding that involves “selling your soul and corrupting your overall purpose”. They should start putting the national interest over their own “short-term economic self-interest”, he said.

Speaking at an event organised by the Policy Exchange think tank, Abbott urged companies and other institutions to reduce their reliance on Chinese money. He said that every business should minimise the role of Chinese intermediate goods in supply chains “lest they be denied just when they’re needed most”, and that academic collaborations with Chinese universities in the hard sciences should be seen as “too much of a one-way street”.

He cautioned against the sale of technology companies, such as the Welsh microchip manufacturer Wafer Fab, to Chinese buyers. “In the end, every Chinese business is subject to the direction of the Beijing government,” he said. The government’s national security adviser is reviewing a bid to buy Wafer Fab by Nexperia, a company based in the Netherlands in which Wingtech Technology, of China, has a controlling stake.

Abbott said the trade deal that he negotiated with China as Australian prime minister in 2014 would not happen today. He described the past few years as “a hell of a wake-up call”, adding: “Australia has found the Beijing government sees trade as a strategic weapon to be turned on and off, like a tap to reward friends and to punish foes.

“In retrospect it looks like wishful thinking, but, at the time, we were confident that there would slowly be not just economic but political liberalisation in China.”

Asked to respond to the comments, Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, insisted that the government was “clear-eyed” in its view of China. “We do have to continue to trade with China. I think the question is how do we work with our like-minded allies to effect change,” she said. “Democratic free-market economies should not be undermined by the trade deals we enter.”

Abbott said that business and academic leaders had a personal responsibility to resist overtures from Beijing. “Now, if you’re a vice-chancellor at one level, the more overseas students you can attract the better, and the more funding you can get for your university the better,” he said. “If that funding involves, in some ways, selling your soul and corrupting your overall purpose, well, it shouldn’t be engaged upon.”

He added: “With the benefit of hindsight, there has been a degree of naivety in our businesses, in our other institutions, as well as frankly a degree of greed. This is where we need character, not just in our national leaders - we need character in all of our leaders, we need people with the character to say no, to put the long-term interest of the country ahead of what might be their short-term economic self-interest.”

Abbott suggested that the “golden years” of Anglo-American dominance in international relations were under threat. The West faced “a cold peace and more likely a new cold war, only against a strategic competitor that’s far more formidable than the old Soviet Union”.

THE TIMES