Yesterday's Empire is Not Today's Empire

At a contentious opening to the G20 summit, Chinese security delivered a message to western reporters: enough posturing, we're here to do business.

Freshly out of the APEC Summit in Peru, Xi Jinping sat with G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the 2024 G20 Summit — the first time the event has been held in Brazil. Almost immediately, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer set proceedings to an awkward start:

Xi spoke first in the meeting on Monday between the two leaders and their officials at the Group of 20 summit in Brazil on Monday, hailing the "broad space for cooperation” between the two nations, including on trade, investment, clean energy and financial services. There were some pleasantries also from Starmer, before the British premier brought up his concerns over sanctioned lawmakers, human rights, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the case of former media mogul Jimmy Lai.

As Starmer mentioned those points of tension, Chinese officials stood up and ordered British journalists out of the room before the premier had finished his remarks. While the British premier’s entourage tried to resist and allow the reporters to stay, the Chinese team physically moved them out of the room.

Credit: Bloomberg TV

An interesting opening gambit, to say the least. Lai, a longtime critic of the Chinese government (and whose supporters during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests loudly advocated for a return to British rule) faces charges alleging a conspiracy to collude with foreign powers, and to publish seditious material. His trial, along with the “Hong Kong 47” resumes this week. At the time of the group’s arrest, China faced a two-pronged PR attack with the protests on one end, and inflated accusations of genocide against Xinjiang region’s Uyghur population on the other.

But it’s rather interesting that freedom of the press and individual speech was the UK’s angle of criticism for China, given its recent crackdown on anti-Zionist speech. Only two weeks ago, Haim Bresheeth, founder of Jewish voices for Palestine, a retired film studies professor, and born Israeli, was arrested by London Metro police during a protest in front of the residence of Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely. Bresheeth’s crime, according to the police, was support of a proscribed organization. In his own words:

“They cannot win against Hamas, they cannot win against Hezbollah, they cannot win against the Houthis. They cannot win against the united resistance to the genocide they have started.”

It doesn’t end there. In October, UK counterterrorism police raided the home of Asa Winstanley, an internationally-known journalist who writes for Electronic Intifada. Winstanley was not charged, but his electronic devices were confiscated. And over the summer, Richard Medhurst, a longtime critic of western imperialism, was arrested for voicing similar sentiments regarding Israel’s genocidal campaign, especially with regards to the lack of long-term viability behind the strategy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and aggression against Yemen, Iran, and Lebanon.

Normally, reporters present for the G20 summit are not able to stay for the duration of the meetings between leaders, and Chinese security was well within its power to usher press members out of the room. But Starmer obviously knew what he was doing with those opening remarks — raising the spectre of Chinese repression against its citizens and the press, and anticipating that reporters would catch at least part of his remarks while being escorted out.

On the other hand, the G20 is not a UN meeting, and Starmer certainly has no room to posture. With the possibility of a new US-led tariff regime looming over the events, and China’s increased influence in Latin America and the Asian Pacific, it was a rather bizarre choice for Starmer to pander to western press with those opening comments. Especially given the UK is not only providing military assistance to Israel in order to prosecute a genocide, but stretching the definitions of its counter-terrorism legislation at home to stifle activists and journalists who speak out against that genocide.

As with the United States’ anemic attempts to assert itself as a viable and ongoing partner to Asian Pacific countries during the APEC Summit in Peru, the UK government must, by now, be well aware that its diminished empire no longer provides the weight of military and economic hegemony behind its Prime Minister’s words.

Welcome to a new age, lads. The world is moving on with or without you.