- China crisis - 10th November 2025
- Programme repeat… - 9th November 2025
- Hard Labour - 6th November 2025
The recent spy case, and next week’s delayed decision on a huge new and highly controversial Chinese embassy, have underscored our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s, firm belief in a free, independent media, which does not exist in China.
It’s in the news now as never before.
China.
Firstly we had the collapse of a China spy trial, which prompted much finger-pointing between Downing Street, the former Conservative UK Government and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Christopher Cash, an ex-parliamentary researcher, and a teacher called Christopher Berry, were arrested two years ago, and charged in April 2024 with passing politically sensitive information to a Chinese intelligence agent between December 2021 and February 2023.
They were about to go on trial on October 6, but three weeks before, the CPS suddenly announced they had dropped the case because the “evidential standard” was “no longer met”.
The pair have always denied allegations that they provided information prejudicial to the interests of the state in breach of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
Secondly we have had details of the giant new Chinese embassy in London, for which a planning decision was due to be made a week on Friday (although it has been delayed).
In UK papers it has been dubbed a ‘super-embassy’ housing hundreds of spies and would be built directly around the City of London’s highly-sensitive telephone exchange.
The proposal to build it has been mired in controversy over claims that Sir Keir Starmer struck a secret deal with Beijing to approve the project – despite strong objections from Britain’s intelligence services.
The Wapping Telephone Exchange (WTE), which is run by BT Openreach and provides leading financial institutions with high-speed fibre optic communications, would be surrounded on three sides by embassy buildings.
The security services complain they have been prevented from submitting evidence to the planning process for the embassy, and that large swathes of the documents China gave were redacted, including plans for two suites of basement rooms and a tunnel, called by critics “the spy dungeons”.
Detractors (including in the opposition Conservative Party, which is using both issues to accuse the UK Government of seeking to “appease” China), warn that the embassy would pose a serious security risk.
The situation is complicated by China having held up progress to rebuild the British embassy in Beijing. But even if the UK Government wanted to give its blessing, a judicial review could overturn any decision.
All of this puts centre stage what is happening in China itself where the sort of independent investigative journalism I undertake which has brought out numerous misdeeds, is NOT allowed.
Politics too is hamstrung.
Instead of the cut and thrust of political debate in the UK Parliament, or the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC), the picture in China’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) is one of polite decorum, dutiful praise of the leader Xi Jinping, and the announcement of ridiculous economic ‘targets’, which are as fanciful as they are unrealistic.
There would be no place for trouble-making journalists like me!
At the latest one in the report of Li Qiang, China’s Prime Minister, announcements were made this year of the same official economic growth target as last year (and they have been described as complete nonsense by experts) – about five per cent.
He also provided a catalogue of 10 “major tasks” for the year that echoed the list in 2024.
There would be, Mr Qiang declared, industrial modernisation, technological self-reliance and expanding domestic demand.
Stimulating domestic spending (which is MUCH needed because the economy is in the doldrums) was elevated from the third priority last year to the top task for 2025.
Indeed, Mr Li mentioned consumption 32 times, which is a record.
The previous peak (adjusted for the length of the speech) was 26 times in 2009, as China tried to revive spending in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
Regrettably China (like many others) is not a signatory of the International Criminal Court (ICC) so it can do nothing about the country’s persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the details of rape, torture as well as mass imprisonment had to be revealed by brave underground journalists.
China has tried to cover up all these abuses, and, for example, blanked out the prison camps on online maps only for diligent researchers to find them again by looking at the empty spaces.
According to Kenneth Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW), China has become the greatest “threat to the global human-rights system”.
This comment, and human rights violations, show, too, the importance of politics (Chinese authorities claim they have dealt with transgressions firmly and have responded to pressure from ordinary people), as well as the role of independent journalism.
Perhaps they are highlighted too, by the collapse of a spy case, and by the furore over the giant new Chinese embassy, with redacted areas.
Details including stories like these by Phil, as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – how as aerospace industries win out, huge investment is underway in cleaner, greener, aircraft, and Wales could benefit.
