Kowtowing at Hinkley Point?

State-owned enterprises Électricité de France (EDF) and China General Nuclear Power Group  (CGN) just announced plans to jointly fund a £24 billion ($36.8 billion) nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in Somserset, England. The U.K. government has promised to put up £17 billion, and the plant is expected to begin operation by 2025, providing 7 percent of the nation's electrical needs. This has, predictably, prompted concern.

It’s a good deal for its investors. Damian Carrington of The Guardian reports that the Hinkley Point power plant has been promised £92 per megawatt hour (MWh), or twice the current market value, for the next 35 years, with consumers covering any deficits. Also, until recently, EDF had trouble securing outside investors, largely due to a lack of faith in the project itself, so China’s involvement comes as a blessing. It works well for China too, if successful the project can be used as an example to help sell CGN’s services to other potential clients. But is it a good deal for the British people?

Chancellor George Osborne, who spearheaded the deal, certainly thinks it is. Along with Hinkley Point, he’s also secured Chinese investment in two more stations, in Suffolk and Essex, bringing in a total of £100 billion and constituting what he considers “the biggest elements” in Britain’s relationship with China.

Opponents to the deal include David Cameron’s former advisor, Steve Hilton, who recently remarked, “I think this is one of the worst national humiliations we’ve seen since we went cap in hand to the I.M.F. in the 1970s. I mean, forget about the terrible things that the Chinese regime is doing at home, the vicious political oppression and the violent physical abuse of women. Just look at what they’re doing internationally, militarily threatening their neighbors, empire-building in Africa, and on a daily basis, stealing property from businesses and governments all around the world with their relentless cyber-attacks. I mean, the truth is that China is a rogue state, just as bad as Russia or Iran.”

Senior military officials have meanwhile suggested that giving China access to a domestic nuclear facility could pose a national security threat. Specific concerns involve the possibility of backdoor traps, which would effectively give the Chinese government a remote “off” switch. But Lord Sassoon, chair of the China Britain Business Council, doesn’t see things that way.

"Why would they want to turn off a nuclear power station in which they had some ownership?” he asked while on BBC’s Today Programme. “It doesn’t seem terribly logical to me, except in extreme circumstances in which that would be the least of the U.K.’s problems.”

Mocking the notion that China is a nefarious agent, and suggesting these attitudes are borne of prejudiced stereotypes, environmentalism skeptic Ben Pile tweeted, “but what if the French put a backdoor into Hinkley Point, to make us all cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, eh?”

No doubt some of the opposition is piggy-backing on feelings that Britain has been too accommodating during Xi’s recent visit, with one Fortune headline reading “a weakened Britain finally learns how to kowtow to Beijing.”

Echoing this sentiment, and elaborating on Hilton’s thoughts, Foreign Policy argued that “Britain’s fawning reception of China’s president is embarrassing -- and a horrible message about the importance of human rights.”

“There is always room for improvement in the world,” Xi himself conceded at a press conference during his trip, adding, “China is ready to increase co-operation with the U.K. and other countries over human rights.”

Cameron complemented the remark by asserting, “I would completely reject the premise that either you can have an exchange with China about the issue of steel – or indeed about human rights – or you can have a strong relationship with China which is good for business, investment and growth...my argument, and my contention after five years of doing this job, is that you can have both. Indeed you must have both.”

This is of course true, but it’s also true that the U.K. isn’t in a very strong position from which to pressure China on human rights, and this has as much to do with its position as Cameron’s view that humanitarianism and business needn’t be mutually exclusive. As CIA analyst Chris Johnson observed, “Barack Obama can stand next to Xi Jinping and tell him the ways in which he sucks. U.K. leaders cannot do that.”

Furthermore, this deal isn’t simply good for EDF and CGN. It’s also good for the U.K., when you consider that its Energy Chair Simon Virley has been issuing warnings regarding energy capacity and potential blackouts, and that the crisis has meanwhile only worsened. China may not be the ideal investor in the eyes of some, or indeed many, but no one else is jumping in to help and 7 percent of the nation’s electrical needs is nothing to sneeze at. As a spokesperson for the Department of Energy and Climate Change commented, “keeping the lights on is non-negotiable.”