Just a Succulent Chinese Meal

...however...is it that much better than a good curry?

This seems rather funny at first read, but the numbers seem, well…interesting.

First, let’s establish our baseline.

According to the business analytics firm Poidata, there are just shy of 15,000 Indian restaurants in Britain compared with closer to 12,000 Chinese establishments.

15 to 12. Five Indian restaurants to four Chinese restaurants. (yes, I can do math) Brits sure do love their curry.

You would expect, with small deviations, for this to be roughly replicated in any particular area.

If you think that ratio would hold around sensitive military locations, you’d be wrong.

Near His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde, for example, which maintains our nuclear deterrent submarines, Chinese establishments outnumber Indian restaurants by 2.9 to 1, and the pattern is repeated elsewhere in the UK.

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At the other end of the country in Plymouth lies the vast Devonport naval base.

At 650 acres, this is the largest such facility in western Europe and boasts four miles of waterfront including 15 dry docks and 25 tidal berths.

As home to the Navy’s largest amphibious vessels as well as undisclosed numbers of warships and research and reconnaissance units, the base is of the utmost military significance.

Intriguingly, Devonport is the central training hub for frontline operations including the Fleet Operational Sea Training organisation, which delivers standards oversight for the Navy. In other words, what goes on in Devonport is highly secretive and of great interest to our enemies.

And so it is interesting to note that there happen to be many Chinese takeaways in close proximity to the base.

The ratio of Chinese restaurants to Indian takeaways is a striking 7:1.

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The British naval base in Portsmouth has been operating for more than 800 years and today provides safe harbour to two-thirds of the Royal Navy surface fleet, including HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince Of Wales, the nation’s two premier aircraft carriers, as well as Type 45 destroyers used to combat enemy aircraft, described by the Navy as the ‘pride of the fleet’….Ironic, perhaps, considering there are no fewer than 2.3 Chinese takeaways near the base for every Indian establishment in the same area.

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…Aldershot is known as the ‘Home of the British Army’. … There are also some 1.7 Chinese restaurants within reach of the garrison, for every one Indian eaterie.

Not unlike what we reported last week near our B-2 base in Missouri…these coincidences just seem to keep popping up.

RNAS Culdrose down in Cornwall, a maritime base home to 3,000 service people…the ratio of Chinese to Indian restaurants is around 2:1.

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Windsor Castle is not only a spectacular royal residence, but the town is home to Combermere Barracks, which houses certain troops from the Household Cavalry Regiment, … within about a mile and a half of Comber- mere Barracks – at a ratio of around 2.7:1.

Could just be noise in the dataset…but…

Nevertheless, fear of espionage around military sites is already high after it was revealed in April that the Ministry of Defence banned electric vehicles with Chinese components from being parked within two miles of certain buildings at the secretive base RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire and other establishments.

The concern is that Chinese tech embedded in the vehicles – such as for collecting audio and location data – could be remotely accessed by the Chinese Communist Party.

We know China runs a co-ordinated and widespread espionage operation in the UK.

In August the Government recognised that ‘instances of China’s espionage, interference in our democracy and the undermining of our economic security have increased in recent years,’ while MI5 chief Ken McCallum admitted in his annual update last month that the service had acted in just the past week to neutralise a Chinese threat to national security.

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In 2017, China’s President Xi passed a controversial new law – with unusual haste and almost zero scrutiny – declaring that every Chinese citizen living anywhere in the world is obliged to answer to the motherland regarding any matter the CCP deems relevant.

Article 14 of the so-called National Security Law declares: ‘State intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may demand that concerned organs, organisations, or citizens provide needed support, assistance and cooperation.’

That raises the possibility that the roughly half a million Chinese nationals living in Britain risk appearing to be espionage assets of the so-called Middle Kingdom – whether they like it or not.

Wait…let’s back up a bit. Did you catch that number?

the roughly half a million Chinese nationals living in Britain

The USA is about 5 times larger than the UK. So, if you adjust for population, that would be 2.5 million Chinese nationals living in the USA.

How many are actually living in the USA? Well, according to Pew, approximately 1.16 million citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were living in the United States. This figure represents non-naturalized foreign-born individuals from China (including Hong Kong and Macau, but excluding Taiwan), who retain PRC citizenship. It encompasses lawful permanent residents, temporary visa holders (such as students and workers), and unauthorized residents.

The UK is a lot more saturated with PRC nationals than the USA is. In both circumstances, what this mass creates is an impossibility for security services to effectively monitor for malign actors should things get sporty with the PRC. It is just too easy to blend in.

What is a nation to do? Well, it is all policy to allow that many foreign nationals to, literally, set up shop in your nation. Change the policy, or accept the risk.