Former MI6 chief John Sawers has said the West needs to seek every mechanism to stop China buying strategic technology and associated firms, including companies such as British semiconductor chip designer Imagination Technologies.
In 2017, Imagination Technologies was acquired by Canyon Bridge, a private equity firm backed by China Reform Holdings, an investment firm with direct ties to the Chinese government.
There are suggestions the company could be moved to China, which has caused consternation with current and former top-level staff, including its founder Hossein Yassaie. The prospect has triggered an investigation by parliamentarians, with Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport ministers summoning the firm’s chair for questioning.
Sawers, chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, 2009 - 2014, claimed China was aggressively seeking to expand its global clout.
— David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) April 7, 2020
“I don’t think it’s an existential threat in the way the Soviet Union was in the Cold War but nevertheless there is going to be deep rivalry over control of technology. We have more to do in the West to make sure we are independent of China. We need to do more to protect Western technology from being bought up by Chinese companies and I think the efforts being made to ensure Imagination isn’t pulled out of the UK and bought up by China is the right thing to do,” he told Sky.
Yassaie, who led the company 1998 - 2016, has said that while he “intentionally refrained from making public comments about the company” after leaving, “recent events are so important for the company, its people and our country I feel I need to speak out and make a few key points”to senior government ministers.
“[Imagination Technologies] provides critical and sensitive technologies to many key customers around the world who rightfully demand and expect adequate independence, security of supply and trust in the organisation,” he explained.
A letter from Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for the department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, addressed to Conservative MP David Davis, said the government was bringing forward legislation that will grant ministers further powers to scrutinise foreign transactions via the National Security and Investment act. The act was introduced during the Queen’s Speech in December 2019, and will allow the government to assess transactions and investments from foreign parties that could impose a national security risk.
— Declan Ganley (@declanganley) April 16, 2020
It marks the second viciously anti-China intervention by the former MI6 chief in two days - on 15th April, he accused Beijing of "evading" responsibility for the coronavirus pandemic, and "concealing” the crisis from the West.
"There is deep anger in America at what they see as having been inflicted on us all by China, and China is evading a good deal of responsibility for the origin of the virus, for failing to deal with it initially,” he said.
As a result, Western governments should "hold China responsible” - and he suggested the World Health Organisation also had “serious questions to answer about its performance”, but anger should be primarily directed against China rather than UN agencies.
