Daily: CATCH A DRAGON BY ITS TAIL – China’s money, Britain’s folly

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cameron and Osborne’s “Golden Era” of cosying up to China turned out to be a golden error, as Beijing dug deep into British life, politics, and technology. Investigative journalist Sam Dunning tells Arthur Snell how the Conservatives’ strings-free get-rich-quick strategy turned into a trap for British business and academia. While the Tories trumpet free speech on campus, students who want talk about the Uyghurs are being silenced at Jesus College Cambridge. Is it too late to curb China’s disturbing influence at the highest levels of British life? “For Osborne, the Golden Era was seen a problem-free get-rich-quick-scheme for Britain after the economic crash.” “How can a Chinese student in the UK contest what’s happening in Hong Kong when Chinese ambassadors are attending university events?” “Huawei is creating surveillance in China that’s beyond Orwellian. Jesus College just received money from them to publish a paper on global governance.” “Even if Johnson did have a roadmap for our relations with China, he’d probably steer off and crash into a tree.” Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofronijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:55.3	look after theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker I'm Arthur Snell. During the David Cameron era, or perhaps what we should
1:16.1	call the George Osborne era, the British government pursued a policy of trying to get as
1:21.3	close as possible to China, both in economic terms but also in
1:26.0	broader cultural and political terms. At the time they described this activity as
1:31.3	the golden era hoping that this would open new
1:34.7	vistas of opportunity for Britain. With hindsight, some people now describe that
1:40.4	as the golden era, allowing China into all kinds of aspects of British political,
1:46.2	commercial and academic life without really understanding the implications of this
1:50.9	policy. Somebody who's put an enormous amount of work into
1:55.0	understanding that is Sam Dunning. He's an investigative journalist and
	...

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