Every once in a while, reasonable concern about what the totalitarian government of China is doing or may do gets ridiculed by somebody in the West who should know better as if it were absurd in the extreme.
And that’s it. Just ridicule and non sequiturs. No discussion of what the claim actually is in any detail or what may be the warrant for it. Just: “Look at what these paranoid sorts have come up with now. The Chinese want to spy on us with their electric cars? How absurd! Wild claims! Electric cars! What else? Spying on us through street lights?”
The villain of the piece is David Cottam, said to be “a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, Hong Kong,” whose views, stresses China Daily, the CCP propaganda rag that sees fit to publish them, “do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily” (“but may well significantly overlap the views of China Daily and/or significantly serve the propaganda purposes of the Chinese Communist Party,” the un-full disclosure should add).
Cars, drones, street lights
According to Cottam’s November 22, 2023 column as reprinted by PressReader (“Are Sino-UK relations at a turning point?”):
“Despite the clear financial and technological benefits of welcoming the Chinese tech giant into Western markets, Huawei has been banned in the United States, Canada, the Kingdom Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and some parts of continental Europe, with national-security risks given as the reason. The well-publicized fears that Huawei would use its technology to spy on Western customers also led to a wider media frenzy, with wild claims about spying through Chinese electric cars, televisions, cameras, drones and even street lights becoming the subject of often ludicrous anti-China headlines.” (Cottam, whoever he is—his presence on the Internet seems to begin and end with the commentary for China Daily—further disparages “ridiculous” UK concerns about electric-car espionage in another China Daily op-ed.)
Are the nature of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party relevant? What about CCP motives to spy on the West? The history of CCP spying and other activities in the West? The actual and potential capacities of the listed items?
These questions do not concern Cottam, who in this particular piece mostly wants to welcome and advise former Prime Minister David Cameron as he returns to top power, now as foreign secretary. The secretary’s re-ascendancy is an ideal opportunity “to resurrect the strong Anglo-Chinese relationship of his premiership…. Cameron would do well to put himself on the winning side of history this time….”
Whenever anyone starts blithering about “winning side of history,” the Klaxons sound and the red lights flash, and we must all take up our positions behind the berm. We are dealing with a Marxist or Hegelian or Marxo-Hegelian who doesn’t need to bother with facts or arguments or choices among fundamental alternatives because History Is On His Side, flattening all before it.
Demonization
Here is Cottam’s take, in the same China Daily–published op-ed (there are others), on what happened to Hong Kong after the pro-democracy protests of 2019 and the mainland-foisted National Security of Law of 2020, used to detain and incarcerate Hongkongers for objecting to tyranny:
“The demonization of China was a part of this [the post-Cameron lurch to the right in the UK], with politicians such as Sir Iaian Duncan Smith given free reign to push their anti-China rhetoric. Following the 2019-20 protests and riots in Hong Kong, this intensified, with the restoration of calm through the National Security Law for Hong Kong being portrayed as a ‘sinister’ move by Beijing to undermine human rights and the rule of law.”
Restoration of calm.
Totalitarian repression, imprisonment of valiant champions of freedom and democracy: “sinister”? Not according to Cottam. A boot stamping on a human face—forever—this is the very best thing, in his view; it’s very calming; everybody should want some.
