Collapse of the Chinese spy case at the highest level in the UK
Firstly the referencing. The phrase ‘Don’t bite the hand that funds you’ comes from one chapter of a book in the 1990s when this human was a low-key journalist and the book was to be reviewed. The title of the book could not be found but the title has stuck in its head since then as being clever, one of those phrases which dances this way and that, obviously from ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ and yet – and yet – saying so much more. Feeding is physical food. Funding is a whole different zone, and to be advised to not bite that hand that funds, well, the zone merely increases in complexity. This blog has added the phrase – at any price… And in this cut and paste world, here the referencing is made to best of ability, and intention does still speak for itself.
So if the above phrase was applied to events in the last few days in the ‘UK’, where a case against two men suspected of spying for China was ready for action by the CPS, the Home Office and MI5, all the background preparation in place and in big legal cases that means a lot of work and a lot of documentation yet in the reverse of the straw that broke the camels back, the highest governing power in the land (of the ‘UK’) refused to tick the box to set the case rolling.
This blog is interested in how humans organise themselves, how their societies are structured under the simple fact of Helios, Earth and gravity, with the requirement of food, water and shelter for survival. “Friend or foe?” until recently (and the last 50 or 100 years are a mere blink of time) used to be clear, or easy to determine after just a few steps, and the status would be measured from within a perimeter of governance. The jurisdiction of the territory was clear, and the jurisdiction of the surrounding and further territories also a clear definition. “Friend or foe?” would be towards a viable entity, whether a person or a society. Viable in biology means living, viable in the English language means something a bit different.
This last week could not be a clearer portrayal of the abysmal state of affairs in the ‘UK’ of 2025. The office of the Prime Minister as the highest point in government/governance was the one in this case who collapsed the dominoes back down the line, yet a high level legal case involving state security and the implications of international espionage would be expected to have all the force of every power in the land to keep that exterior strong.
Probably not much food comes from China, apart from the eons old trade of real food for real Chinese people, and the now millions of Chinese students in the major (and minor) universities, all of whom are seen to be carefully shopping, communicating in their own language, usually Mandarin, cooking together, and taking their studies very seriously. In the city centres of London, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester… the Chinese supermarkets are full of goods a Chinese person knows how to use. And the Chinese takeaways, they are still an integrated part of many cities and towns. So that is food from China, but apart from that, fresh food is not really a big commodity coming into the ‘UK’. Not like the fruit and vegetables and so much else arriving from many parts of the world, using their water, disrupting the networks, even New Zealand is turning over its land to grow more vines for wine, to transport the heavy bottles all the way to the ‘UK.’
That is why the phrase, ‘Don’t bite the hand that funds you,’ which as said earlier came from a book chapter in the 1990s, just says it all. If like a biological dye which is tracked through veins and arteries the finance originating from China was run through the manufacturing, university, utilities, technology, household consumer, medical and scientific networks in the ‘UK’ how would it be possible to make one clear statement that ‘China is a threat’? A threat to what? A threat to national security requires a clear recipient and there is none.
In a strange contortion of reality, the case collapse of the last week appears as an inversion of the principles of survival. A threat to the national survival and security of societal existence would be if the entire Chinese network of finance in the ‘UK’ disappeared. The cost of biting that Chinese hand which funds us is not even contemplatable because there is now no way of asking who is friend and who is foe. It would be more honest of the Prime Minister if he declared the ‘UK’ a vassal state of China. The Treaty of Nanking was only in 1842, a mere 180 or so years ago, when clear lines of ethnicity, national governments, climatic zones, culture and language were taken as the baseline of human societies, and power of governments showed as a very clear line, as the Chinese government well remember after the imposed Treaties by the British and the French (and the French).
What a bizarre state of affairs this is in 2025.
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