Here we go again. China recast as an evil empire for spawning Covid, deploying spy balloons, arming the Russians, collecting our data from CCTV systems and TikTok - violators of Human Rights. Radically different geopolitics than being discussed in the South of France, March 1994:

Although we have our feet up in the quiet hotel bar and each sip on excellent malt whisky, the late Sir Edward Heath is not in the best of moods; the former Prime Minister’s flight delayed five hours when the Provisional IRA began lobbing homemade mortars onto the runway at Heathrow. My younger self is not soothing his understandably irritable disposition. “That’s not right,” I interrupt.

Sir Edward knits great eyebrows, continues explaining why authoritarianism in China is acceptable due to their huge population. Our kind of democracy just couldn’t work there, he says.

“Nothing to do with it,” say I. My idealistic position, the Tiananmen Square massacre fresh in my mind, that we should aspire and agitate for all people to enjoy the Human Rights taken for granted in the West. Not for the first time Sir Edward calls my thinking naive.

Sir Edward should know, visiting China on 30 occasions and developing consequential friendships with Chinese leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. His personal efforts heralding a quarter-century ‘golden era’ of relations between China and Britain. Boosting trade and economic opportunities, military cooperation, high-level state visits; far more in the British interest than grumbling about Chinese Human Rights violations. A moneymaking golden era demands such trifles are to be politely understated or expediently ignored, as per Sir Edward.

Colour me sceptical, for I am old enough to have absorbed George Orwell’s 1984 when the narrative was entirely set in an uncertain future. Decades later, Orwell’s commentary appears more prophetic documentary than dystopian fiction, featuring a still recognisable world of constantly rotating, two-against-one alliances between three superpowers:

Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. [...] Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil.

It is hard not to see current realigning between NATO, Russia, and China again mimicking Orwell’s dystopia. Hard not to relate to the collective amnesia we are expected to develop during such geopolitical shifts. For I remember not so long ago being informed that China along with Russia were our buddies. I remember Putin sipping tea with Queen Elizabeth, Xi supping ale with David Cameron. I remember that the diminished threat, the implausibility of tank battles raging again across modern Europe, were the primary (and now defunct) reasons presented to the British public for hollowing out our Armed Forces.

But our “golden” relationship with China became increasingly fractious after the UK began supporting Hong Kong’s democracy movements. Worsened further after the UK Parliament’s Defence Committee released a report that suggested the removal of all Huawei equipment from UK 5G networks, over security concerns. Worse still after the UK imposed sanctions on senior Chinese officials involved with the mass detention of Uighur Muslims and worse again after MPs passed a motion declaring the mass detention a genocide. Terminally, at the end of last year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak used his first major foreign policy speech to highlight the creeping authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s government and the threat China poses to British values. “The so-called ‘golden era’ is over,” Sunak said, “along with the naive idea that trade would lead to social and political reform.” So, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia have again shifted alliances just as George Orwell depicted. Xi and Putin best friends. Enmity towards the United States and its NATO allies far more important than any other differences.

So, what has all this to do with mid-Wales? Well, Welsh public bodies using Chinese-made CCTV cameras are being asked to scrap their systems after increasing concerns that Chinese firms could be required to co-operate with Beijing’s security services. UK CCTV Commissioner Fraser Sampson (bet you didn’t know we had one of those) asserts the use of Chinese surveillance systems is a “real risk on every corner”. Accordingly, the UK government has instructed departments to stop installing Chinese surveillance systems on sensitive sites.

So, what to do with those Chinese CCTV systems bought by the Welsh government and by three of four Welsh police forces? (we also have Chinese-made CCTV in The Vaults. Whoops). Well, the Welsh government plans changing their system, but not immediately, intends using Chinese-made CCTV for the foreseeable future (same in The Vaults, for the current system works well and would be expensive to immediately replace). Any outright ban, the Welsh government say, would need to be implemented at a UK level. Likewise, in defending a Dyfed-Powys Police spend of £1.5m on Chinese CCTV, the force’s Police and Crime Commissioner Dafydd Llywelyn said while he understood concerns, it would be hard to “immediately de-establish” the system. But “we have got significant safeguards in place in relation to our CCTV system,” he reassures.

I am relieved to note Wales not quite so knee-jerky in its reaction to this latest round of shifts in global alliances. For had we really cared about security or ethical procurement we would not have installed Chinese systems in the first place (The Vaults included). So, calling for immediate removal appears an expensive geopolitical gesture, a day late, a dollar short - dollars our strained public purse has already parted with. And then, from whom should we buy future CCTV systems? The Americans? Saudis? Pursuing “trade and investment opportunities” the Welsh Government have become quite pally with Qatar right now, apparently. But procuring from ‘allies’ with dodgy Human Rights records is what got us in this mess in the first place, isn’t it?

Contrary to Sir Edward’s impression, it is not naive to object to Human Rights rolled out to dehumanise an enemy yet ignored or explained away whenever economically or politically inconvenient. That the death penalty in the United States hardly gets a mention. Nor Guantanamo Bay. Little protest against Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish minorities, nor its suppression of media. Reluctant to undermine ‘golden’ relationships with Human Rights violators such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or Israel, and in turn discount our own inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers.

It is incredibly naive to swallow the notion that we and our allies never abuse Human Rights or to pretend that it only matters when bitter enemies do terrible things. It is also naive, as Rishi Sunak recently noted, to imagine that increased trade and presenting an appeasing silence will lead to social and political reform. Therefore, not being naive is why we should remain subscribed to Orwell’s 1984 theme that as global politics shift and shift again, the pursuit of universal Human Rights, home and away, with friend and foe, must remain fierce, consistent, and entirely incorruptible.