The Chinese ‘spy’ cosying up to Prince Andrew is part of a much more dangerous game

Xi Jinping likes princes. The party’s United Front Work Department honed its skills at deception in the 1940s when it persuaded a swathe of Chinese liberals and intellectuals that it would do them no harm. While Xi Jinping’s father fought in the Red Army that marched on Beijing, his comrades in “united front” work sapped the willpower of their opponents so that the rival armies eventually collapsed and fled. That is the task of Beijing’s army of bankers, traders, academics, officials and think-tankers: to deliver a softly persuasive message via their fellow travellers that China is not a threat, seeks only a fairer world order and is merely striving for its rights in what Xi Jinping and his “friend” Vladimir Putin agree are “changes unseen in a hundred years”. That is exactly the instant of hesitation for which the Chinese state will expend unlimited intelligence resources and influence invested far into the future – the ability to make America’s allies think twice.