Last week the British political establishment was shaken by a rare MI5 alert warning of a Chinese party-state agent operating in parliament. Christine Lee, who, according to MI5, has engaged in both overt and covert activity in support of the Chinese Communist party, cultivated links to British politicians for more than a decade (the Chinese embassy in London has denied these claims).
It’s tempting to consider this revelation as yet another sign that we are entering a new cold war. In fact, the international landscape differs radically from the power struggle that defined the period after the second world war. To be sure, the world of spying and espionage still exists, but the current relationship between liberal democracies and authoritarian states is more like a phoney peace. Globalisation has entangled these opposing political regimes in complex and, at times, contradictory ways.
