OPINION / OBSERVER
Abusing 'national security,' Britain risks business environment, global trade order
Published: Mar 29, 2023 11:21 PM
TikTok Photo: VCG

TikTok Photo: VCG

Once upon a time, the British Empire was the dominant power in the world, which was achieved mainly through trade. Now, the UK - the "descendant" of the empire - is blindly following the US with short-sighted political maneuvers, destroying its own business environment and undermining global free trade.

On Tuesday, Chinese Ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang said China firmly opposes the UK making up excuses to suppress Chinese enterprises in response to London's decision to ban short-video platform TikTok from official government devices. Such political manipulation of the UK will damage itself and others, making the widely popular social media app, especially for young people, unavailable, Zheng added. He urged the UK to respect facts and stop suppressing Chinese enterprises by generalizing and abusing the concept of national security.

It is clear that TikTok has achieved great success in the West over the past few years. In the UK alone, it overtook Snapchat last year to become the third most popular social network. Some projections suggest that by 2026, 21.1 million British - nearly a third of the UK population and more than half of all mobile social network users - will be regular TikTok users. However, to push for the so-called decoupling from and containment of China, Western countries led by the US and UK have decided to restrict and suppress TikTok, disregarding the fact that this is a blatant violation of the free market and trade that the West has been advocating.

TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is from China, is not the first victim of London's generalization and abuse of the concept of national security. In November 2022, the British government demanded Nexperia, a Chinese-owned Dutch chip-making company, to divest 86 percent of its stake in the Newport Wafer Fab it had acquired, citing "national security risks." Four months before that, the UK banned licensing intellectual property related to motion camera technology to a Chinese company on the so-called national security grounds.

Gao Jian, director of the Center for European Think Tank Studies at Shanghai International Studies University, told the Global Times that the actions from the US and Britain clearly demonstrate that these countries are promoting a cold war mentality that pursues confrontations and a zero-sum game. Their demonization of Chinese companies is shameless slander and defamation, he said.

So far, neither the US nor the UK has provided convincing evidence to support their accusations against these Chinese companies, be it TikTok or tech giant Huawei. "They are already sure that these Chinese enterprises are guilty before anything, which reveals their logic of bandits and power politics," Gao noted.

In the eyes of some Westerners, the biggest problem with TikTok is its "Chinese blood." In the ongoing "witch-hunt" against Chinese companies in the West, many people are essentially trying to play the "China threat" card for their own benefits - politically and economically. 

In this hunt, we've also seen clearly the ugliness of politicization, a handy tool for certain Western countries. This can be exemplified in TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew's recent testimony before US Congress, a show trial to harass the company. Of course, more people see the rude, arrogant and domineering nature of some US politicians.

For the UK, the constant generalization and abuse of the concept of national security will cause considerable harm to its own interests. Under the pressure of Washington and the influence of some British politicians' extremely strong cold war mentality, the UK has gone astray from the trade and commerce that its prosperity came from. Instead, it's now openly treading on the basic principles and rules of international free trade.

"Such short-sightedness of the UK will certainly, in the medium and long term, profoundly damage the country's business environment, damage its credibility and image in the world, and ultimately harm its economy, which is already in deep crisis today, even more," said Gao.

Under the misperception of China and the misdirection of the US' bullying policy, Britain is pushing itself step by step into the abyss of greater troubles. It is time for the UK to weigh up whether it benefits or harms itself more by using political means to suppress foreign companies under the pretext of unwarranted "risks."