By John Hemmings*
The United Kingdom’s (UK) Indo-Pacific posture is on full display this year. While nobody uses the ‘tilt’ as a term, one can see that London has built a noteworthy economic and military footprint in the region over the past few years – relying, as it always does, on a lattice of close allies and partners such as the United States (US), Australia, South Korea and Japan. It is doing so in a way which demonstrates that it considers peace and security in the region to be integral to its own national security. (From: Britain’s World.)
When thinking of ‘NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] First, but not NATO only’, it is this footprint which comes to mind.
In addition to signing trade agreements with Singapore, Japan, Australia and now India, Britain has also bolstered its military presence in the region, supporting allies – including Japan, Australia and the US – in their defence of international law and free and open sea lanes. Beginning with HMS Albion’s freedom of navigation manoeuvre in 2018, followed by the deployment of the HMS Queen Elizabeth-led Carrier Strike Group 2021 to the region and the signing of the AUKUS agreement later that year, the UK has certainly made an impact on regional perceptions of free and open nations’ interests on unimpeded shipping lanes.
Of course, this means that it has also become a target for influence operations. This is particularly relevant to the ongoing Carrier Strike Group 2025 (CSG2025), which has left Australia and is currently sailing north to Japan and South Korea – and which will be subject to attacks by the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) propagandists.
Presented with the challenge of illegitimacy in the eyes of the region, Chinese propagandists came up with three new communications narratives, which have been applied to the UK (and others) in a bid to recapture the information ‘high ground’.
As a reminder, Chinese propaganda is primarily based on the ‘Three Warfares’ – psychological, media, and legal warfare, or ‘lawfare’. The transit of HMS Albion through the South China Sea in 2018 was the first instance in which the Royal Navy sought to challenge specious Chinese territorial claims through a freedom of navigation manoeuvre, and serves as a useful template for Chinese information operations.
The background will be familiar to most readers; Britain implemented the manoeuvre to demonstrate non-acceptance of expansionist maritime claims made by Beijing. These were legally ambiguous – rejected in 2016 by an arbitral tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) – and seemed to combine misreadings of UNCLOS with spurious concepts such as the ‘Nine dash line’.
Presented with the challenge of illegitimacy in the eyes of the region, Chinese propagandists came up with three new communications narratives, which have been applied to the UK (and others) in a bid to recapture the information ‘high ground’.
Theme one: Geography and empire
The first narrative is that of geography and Britain’s distance from the Indo-Pacific region. Raising this allows Beijing to highlight the UK as an ‘outsider power’, projecting power in a place it shouldn’t rightfully be. This also allows the PRC to frame British actions through the lens of imperialism; a charge with emotive connotations in Southeast Asia, home to various former British colonies. The Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) English-language newspaper, states that the UK’s return to Asia is ‘seemingly a revival of its imperial nostalgia’. It should, one article from April advises, ‘soberly recognise that today’s Britain is no longer the British Empire of the past, and today’s Asia is no longer a collection of colonies’.
Imperial motifs were also notably used in 2021 by Liu Xiaoming, then Chinese Ambassador to the UK. Liu accused Britain of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ prior to HMS Queen Elizabeth’s deployment to the Indo-Pacific, which was then repeated by George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, in British media. This accusation is sometimes softened to a misguided attempt by the UK to remain ‘relevant’.
Theme two: Projecting blame
Beijing also seeks to project blame in its messaging activities, which focus attention on Britain as an actor and the Indo-Pacific region as acted upon. In this reading, the UK is undertaking ‘coercive or destabilising activities’. When Britain evokes international law and UNCLOS, the PRC responds by alleging that London is ‘hyping up the issue’ and ‘stirring up trouble’. It should be noted that such messaging is also used against the US – unlike the imperial messaging, which seems to be specifically tailored to the UK.
The PRC also attempts to delegitimise collective activity by accusing states of ‘ganging up’ against it. After the AUKUS announcement in 2021, Beijing accused the three partner countries of fostering ‘bloc confrontation’, ‘intensifying [an] arms race’ and increasing ‘the risk of nuclear proliferation’. These narratives all share the implicit and often explicit threat that a miscalculation will lead to military confrontation between the PRC and the subject; a form of psychological coercion. As CSG2025 met with Japanese forces, Beijing has also focused its ire on Japan, calling it an ‘aggressor and a defeated nation in the war’; one which should ‘deeply reflect on its crimes’ rather than ‘flexing its muscles with its de facto aircraft carrier’.
Theme three: American Cold War against the PRC
Finally, it is likely that Chinese propagandists will accuse Britain of ‘Cold War thinking’ or of having a ‘Cold War mentality’. This is a common narrative it reserves for use against the US – the nation Beijing views as its key competitor for regional and global hegemony. The PRC has used ‘containment’ and ‘cold war’ as information weapons, intended to portray it as an innocent victim of aggression; of countries wishing to keep it down.
This narrative is central to Beijing’s messaging strategy in the Indo-Pacific. It rests on the assumption that the US and its allies and partners have military industrial complexes which need enemies, and see the PRC and Chinese socialism as convenient threats. This strategy also tends to remove agency and independence from non-US states – in 2016, Chinese critics of the 2016 tribunal claimed that it was ‘orchestrated’ by the US and that the Philippines was a ‘puppet’.
As mentioned, media is one of the Three Warfares, and Beijing seeks to influence foreign media to ‘tell China’s story well’, a phrase coined by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CCP, at the 2013 National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference. In Africa and other parts of the so-called ‘Global South’, the PRC spends lavishly on local partnerships, media training programmes and scholarships, and advertising in local media in order to build a network of influence. Xinhua, the CCP’s news agency, has one of the largest networks of correspondents globally. It is with this in mind that Chinese propaganda will likely target CSG2025 as it makes its way to Japan and South Korea. London will have to deploy its own counter-messaging strategy; one which has equal weight within the British press as well as in Southeast Asia and other parts of the Global South.
Counter-themes
The notion that the UK has been invited and welcomed into the region as a stabilising and reassuring force is already in use – the Royal Navy’s decision to partner with local Asian powers plays well to its inclination to operational multilateralism as well as an implicit messaging strategy that Britain is supporting regional states. As CSG2025 moves north, it has stopped to carry out exercises with the Indonesian Navy – a nod to the country’s position as Southeast Asia’s largest power.
By the time this article is published, CSG2025 will have met up with the Japanese destroyer JS Kaga and the American aircraft carrier USS George Washington, and carried out the multinational exercise Operation HIGHTOWER.
It was a bit of a missed opportunity that CSG2025 did not engage with the Philippines as a country which has been victimised the most by the PRC’s expansionist strategy in the South China Sea. A port call or exercise with the Philippines would have emphasised the UK’s support for small countries being bullied by the PRC, with Manila and London promoting the importance of the ‘rule of law’ and of sovereign rights in the maritime sphere. It would also be opportune for overall British messaging to turn the charge of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ against the PRC, when its maritime militia or coast guard next ram or intimidate regional coast guard vessels.
By the time this article is published, CSG2025 will have met up with the JS Kaga, a Japanese destroyer, and the USS George Washington, an American aircraft carrier, and carried out the multinational exercise Operation HIGHTOWER. This will no doubt result in photos of the multilateral force sailing together with F-35B Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft flying overhead. While such pictures have been a mainstay – almost a cliché – of defence messaging, they remain the most powerful way to underscore the principle of collective defence. It would be ideal if the multinational nature of CSG2025 could also be emphasised on social media and news interviews.
As CSG2025 gets closer to Japan and South Korea, it will have to straddle the difficult line of messaging which appeals to both a home audience and a global audience. This is not only important, but essential to winning the hearts and minds of a region desperate for the rule of law.
*Dr John Hemmings is Deputy Director (Geopolitics) at the Council on Geostrategy and a Senior Adviser at the Pacific Forum. Previously, he worked for the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii.
