Still Made in China: How dependent are the Five Eyes on China’s Supply chains?

This event launches a major research project looking at how the Five Eyes have increased their “strategic dependencies” on Chinese supply chains over the past decade (2015 – 2025). Tracking UN Comtrade data, we found that four of the five have increased their strategic dependence on China; that’s to say that China had become a sole provider of goods or a provider that could not be easily replaced in their supply chains. In addition to reviewing the overall trade relationships, this report analysed four sensitive sectors across the five: (1) biopharma, (2) information communication technology, (3) critical manufacturing and advanced materials and (4) critical minerals. The results were surprising and at times, shocking. They do not bode well for our national security. In this period, we found that the UK had increased its overall strategic dependence on China by 60% and in information communication technologies, it had actually increased strategic dependence by 460% in only two years. Join Lord Alton of Liverpool, the report authors, and Charles Parton for a discussion of these findings and how the UK and its allies might design policy solutions to decrease dependency.