The Foreign Office has told government officials not to use the term “hostile state” in case it upsets China.
Use of the phrase has been effectively banned in government documents and routine internal communications on email and WhatsApp between civil servants, ministers and advisers.
A government official in another department had a recent submission knocked back by the Foreign Office and asked for an explanation. The Foreign Office told the official: “States aren’t inherently hostile themselves, they just do hostile things.”
The change in language is understood to be part of an effort to improve diplomatic relations with China. However, it has also meant that the government no longer refers to Russia, North Korea or Iran as “hostile states”.
Government documents, including the integrated review of foreign and defence policy, no longer use the term.
Officials have edited documents published under previous governments, including the 2021 integrated review of the UK’s security, defence and foreign policy to remove references to “hostile states”. It has been replaced with the phrase “hostile actors,” while terms such as “hostile state activity” have been replaced with “state threats”.
Officials have described the change as “ludicrous” as it weakened Britain’s criticism of China, Russia and Iran. One described the stance as “extraordinary” and said it had caused “a lot of bemusement across government”. A Whitehall source said: “Does anyone think Russia isn’t a hostile state?”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said banning the term was “all about China”. The former cabinet minister, who is among five MPs banned from visiting China due to his criticism of the state’s human rights abuses, told The Times: “It’s pathetic. Our position towards China is that we’ll deal with it with robust pragmatism but often you can’t be robust and pragmatic at the same time.
“This is Orwellian political speak in which you invent terms that are themselves meaningless to describe genuine dangerous and difficult circumstances because you have an ulterior motive such as not frightening your own people or not to upset those you are dealing with. The idea that China is not a hostile state is absurd.
“Chinese companies in the UK are data harvesting and using things like social media sites like TikTok for the Chinese state. All Chinese companies are obligated under the national security law to give all data that they glean, when requested, to the Chinese state. None of them are free enterprises.”
The Foreign Office said that it had advised officials to stop using the term due to advice that it was legally ambiguous, a source said. The term “hostile actors” gave the government better “legal grounding”.
A government spokesman said: “The integrated review refresh uses a range of terms to describe the activities of state and non-state actors, including ‘state threats’. This terminology is agreed across government and is widely used by our allies. The government continues to take strong action to counter state threats against the UK, including measures to protect our supply chains from China’s coercive economic activity and the announcement last week of a new sanctions regime targeting Iran.”
It is likely to prompt a new row with Conservative MPs. Liz Truss is among several backbenchers who have urged Sunak to take a harder line against Beijing in response to China’s security clampdown on Hong Kong, its threats against Taiwan, persecution of Uighur minorities in Xinjiang, its sanctions against numerous visiting MPs and data harvesting by Chinese state-owned companies.
