We rarely think about what it means to assign towns or neighbourhoods to the bottom of our moral geography; but those who live in them often feel ashamed, not because they have committed any wrong but because they know they are seen as lesser beings. They report feeling small and powerless, with their behaviour “painfully scrutinised and negatively evaluated”. Sadness, depression and a sense of isolation can often follow. The effect on the self can be devastating.

Curiously, this kind of humiliation becomes possible only when a society has, in its ideology, transcended ideas of natural difference, and convinced its citizens that they are due equal rights and dignity. For instance, when women and non-white people demanded equal rights and dignity, they rightly began to push back against the everyday slights and humiliations visited on them by dominant groups, who found shaming people on the basis of their gender or race increasingly frowned upon. 

In the great era of post-war social democracy, something similar began to happen in the case of social class. In the most wince-inducing scene of The Remains of the Day, set in the Thirties, the butler — Stevens, whose life goal is to serve his master with complete devotion and professionalism — is humiliated by the patrician friend of Lord Darlington who wants to demonstrate the lower class’s ignorance of global affairs and therefore the error of permitting them to have a vote. Yet, despite our own embarrassment and rising sense of outrage, the butler, played in the film by Anthony Hopkins, did not seem to feel the humiliation — because he accepted implicitly that he was of a lower social order and should not be expected to know these things.

Social shaming is by no means confined to the lower orders, whom today we refer to with terms such as disadvantaged communities and the precariat. In fact, shaming is a general phenomenon of stratified society, although its effect is much more apparent in some.

A survey of Australians we commissioned for our new book, The Privileged Few, found that half of young adults admit to having felt ashamed about where they grew up, the school they attended, or their parents’ employment. Shame is a strong emotion to admit too, even in an anonymised survey. We found that parents in households with children are much more likely to admit to feelings of shame than those in households without children, perhaps because adolescents feel shame more intensely than adults and memories of emotional wounds fade as one grows older. In our follow-up focus groups, some made poignant comments about how, as children, they thought they were normal until someone denigrated their suburb or their school or even their father’s low-status job.

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The side effect of this shaming is worryingly that people lower down the hierarchy say they conceal where they live or where they went to school, either by lying or becoming evasive when asked. One of our informants spoke of how “people would cringe when I mentioned the… suburb I came from, so sometimes I’d pick another suburb, so they don’t cringe”. Another said that when he mentioned his state school to a partner at the accounting firm where he works, “he visibly recoiled… He looked at me differently.”

In 2012, Owen Jones published Chavs, a powerful polemic against the demonisation of the working class, or at least the element of it characterised by the media and some politicians as “feckless, criminalised and ignorant”. But the extremes of condescension, scorn and even disgust directed at “chavs” should be understood within a broader distribution of “microaggressions” up and down the social scale and manifesting in feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, resentment, guilt, envy, arrogance and contempt. Unlike debates over the microaggressions of race and gender that have dominated the public domain in recent years, the microaggressions of class are often ignored. Yet they seethe beneath the surface, erupting at times when the privileges enjoyed by elites become too brazen, too egregious — justas they did during the pandemic. 

As the Covid virus spread in the early months of 2020, and London began to shut down, wealthy families fled the city for their sanctuaries in the country. Others took to their yachts or flew to Caribbean islands. Estate agents fielded inquiries from the super-rich for “mansions with bunkers”. Newspaper stories reporting the flight of the rich attracted a torrent of bitter and cynical comments from the public. 

We argue in our book that relations among those up and down the social scale are fraught with emotional effort and inner turmoil. Informants for our study (in “egalitarian” Australia) admitted that they pay more attention and respect to people they believe are wealthy or influential. Some look up to them even though they don’t want to and it goes against the grain of their moral code. One conceded that if someone pointed out a billionaire at a party then “I think you may afford them a bit more respect”. These comments were made bashfully, as if looking up to the rich and powerful went against some inner principle or entailed a small sacrifice of dignity.

At the other end of the spectrum, some from a higher position in the hierarchy may want to be respectful and congenial in their relations with those below, but risk being seen as condescending, disrespectful or unduly familiar. While one spoke of levelling-up by changing the way she speaks and carries herself in the presence of a higher status person, another, who had attended an elite school, commented that the adjustment can work the other way so that “you might come down a notch or two”. But he has also discovered that the gulf between the elites and the rest sometimes takes the form of disdain from below: “You get on really well with somebody and then they ask you that dreaded question ‘Where do you live? What school do you go to?’ And the instant you say it, their face drops.”

We are not suggesting an equivalence between disdain from above and disdain from below. The face drop does not have the social power of the cringe. As Kathryn Abrams observed, “a war of disgusts is one that those less socially privileged are unlikely to win”.

These injuries of social class are often felt most painfully in the schoolyard, among children yet to learn the rules of social inhibition or, indeed, respect for difference. In schools, interactions among students and between students and teachers are beset by the everyday slights and humiliations associated with social and economic difference. Yet the language of class, once a powerful tool serving the interests of equality and dignity, has fallen out of fashion. The words to parry the microaggressions of class are absent.

If you speak to 11-year-olds, they can call out sexism and racism, even ageism, but when it comes to discrimination or vilification on the basis of class or social status they are dumbstruck. Those students who intend to remain in the state system after primary school are often shamed by those whose parents are sending them to elite private schools. Public schools are “shit”, said one. How does an 11-year-old respond? With an explanation of the social benefits of the public education system? Or with an epithet such as “snob”, which has little rhetorical power in the neoliberal area of “choice” and getting ahead by whatever means possible. The absence of a language of class politics — as opposed to a vibrant language of gender and racial politics — means that shaming on the basis of social status or the school one goes to is taken in as personal wound rather than as an expression of social division.

Students at elite private schools in Britain as elsewhere are taught to assume the superiority of their position. As one graduate observed: “I joined Westminster School [in London] for sixth form. On my first day we were given a talk by the headmaster, who told us: “You are the crème de la crème of this country. Sitting around you are future leaders. Don’t you forget it.”

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These schools aim to imbue the offspring of the elite with certain higher moral and spiritual qualities, a process known as consecration, sanctifying these students as beyond the ordinary and moulding them into objects of power and influence; in short, elite. They are taught the dispositions of ease, confidence and entitlement appropriate to a world of privilege. 

The uncomfortable conclusion we draw is that elite privilege is best viewed as a set of everyday practices that sorts and reproduces social strata. Studying the alchemy of how privilege is done, whereby elites seek and are granted exclusive benefits, suggests that the privileges bestowed on elites are not a by-product of wealth but an organising principle used to enforce social difference. In the end, it is our collective compliance that makes elite privilege so deeply entrenched and “natural”, even though it is responsible for so many harms: economic harms, civic harms, and psychic harms, not least the everyday system of shaming and humiliation that is characteristic of a society of privilege. 

Still, it’s a dangerous game for the elites because shaming can congeal into resentment, a political anger that can break through in unpredictable ways. A political class that not only lacks an understanding of the problems of class demonisation but actively seeks to participate in it is doomed to face the reckoning of a vengeful electorate.

What could this mean in practice? To put it simply, if he were so inclined, President Xi Jinping could, at the flick of a button, turn off the lights at 10 Downing Street — not to mention freeze Britain’s financial system and paralyse its hospitals.

Perhaps that’s why there has been such a concerted effort by British politicians in recent weeks  to address their country’s dependence on trade with Beijing. These efforts are certainly well-intentioned, but as someone who has spent years charting China’s silent campaign of global interference and subversion, I fear they could be too late. In my recent book, Hidden Hand, my co-author Mareike Ohlberg and I detailed the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to Western democracy. Here, for the first time, a small but disproportionately concerning new aspect of that can be revealed: how China is slowly taking over Britain’s nuclear power and electricity systems.

On the face of it, you could be forgiven for wondering why Chinese investment is so troubling. Why should we care that its businesses are investing in Britain, when those from other countries — including a number of unpleasant ones — do the same? The answer is straightforward. China is different because its businesses can be, and are, used as an extension of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Referred to as a “party-corporate conglomerate”, there is a deep intermingling of China’s business elite with the “red aristocracy” — that is, the Communist Party families that rule the nation. Even President Xi, who pledged to crack down on corruption following the CCP’s 18^th National Congress in 2012, has family members with secret offshore bank accounts and hundreds of millions in assets squirrelled away.

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At its heart, however, the party-corporate conglomerate is built on the strength of China’s powerful state-owned enterprises. While we in the West once believed that, under the auspices of “globalisation”, drawing China into the global economy would see independent private enterprise prevail, under Xi the opposite has occurred. In 2016, for example, President Xi declared that the party’s leadership is the “root and soul” of state-owned companies and they should “become important forces to implement” the decisions of the party.

More worryingly, the following year China’s parliament passed a law that obliges all Chinese citizens overseas to provide assistance to the country’s intelligence services if requested: Article Seven stipulates that “any organisation or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.” And that applies to heads of Chinese corporations as much as to any other citizen. If China’s shadowy Ministry of State Security tells the boss of Huawei in Britain to do some spying, then he is obliged to obey. Anyone who dared to refuse could be escorted back to China quick-smart — never to be seen again.

Such occurrences are, however, rare. Chinese companies have Communist Party cells active inside them — the secretary of the cell is the most powerful person in the company. After all, he (and it normally is a he) represents the masters in Beijing and can over-rule the company’s board. However, conflict between a company board and party cell is hardly common. In 2016, President Xi decreed that the positions of party secretary and chairman of a Chinese company’s board should be occupied by the same person.

All of this applies to the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), which owns a third of the nuclear power station being built at Hinkley Point and hopes to be involved in the construction of two more nuclear plants, at Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. The personnel of CGN is typical of any CCP-sponsored company. Until a few months ago, its chairman in Shenzhen was a man called He Yu, who doubled as the secretary of the company’s Communist Party cell. He was instrumental in securing CGN’s investment in the Hinkley power plant.

His replacement, Yang Changli, was appointed secretary of the party committee and chairman of the CGN’s board in July 2020. As business executives, their aim is to advance CGN’s commercial interests, but as senior cadres of the CCP their first loyalty must be to the party.

Nor are He and Yang the only ones at CGN with disturbing ties to the CCP. Outside of China, Zheng Dongshan, the man who runs its UK subsidiary, has also been a member of the parent company’s “CCP Leadership Group”. However, before he arrived in Britain in 2017, “Comrade Zheng” took the precaution of resigning from his party positions. Even so, it’s safe to say that he still toes the party line. If Beijing asks CGN UK to do something, then it must — even if it could spell disaster for the UK.

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Allegations of its connections to the CCP probably explain CGN UK’s recent attempt to create an acceptable face for the company to the British public. In 2019, it set up a UK advisory board featuring knights of the realm, including former Chairman of Crossrail Sir Terry Morgan and once top civil servant Sir Brian Bender. Like Huawei’s local board, which bristles with titles (Lord Brown, Dame Helen Alexander, Sir Andrew Cahn, Sir Michael Rake), they are, in effect, there to help the company’s public relations.

And CGN needs all the good PR it can get. In 2017 a CGN engineer was jailed in Tennessee after he was convicted of enlisting US experts to transfer to CGN sensitive American nuclear technology with military uses. It clearly rattled the White House, which blacklisted the company two years ago, accusing it of stealing American nuclear technology. Only recently, FBI director Christopher Wray said that the bureau has around 1,000 active investigations into technology theft carried out for the benefit of China.

Of course, there is nothing to suggest that CGN has any plans to steal commercial secrets relating to Britain’s nuclear energy system. But it is still worth noting the recent warning by a senior US official to the UK government not to engage with CGN because the company is part of Beijing’s efforts to use civilian nuclear technology for military purposes. It is part, he explained, of Xi Jinping’s program of “civil-military fusion” ­— that is, to break down barriers between civil and military institutions to allow personnel and technology to be shared.

Meanwhile, the role of Chinese companies in keeping Britain’s lights on goes well beyond CGN’s role in nuclear energy. In recent years, they have also invested heavily in solar and wind power, the future of Britain’s energy supply. CGN itself owns two wind farms in Britain.

Perhaps more importantly, Chinese state-owned company China Huaneng Group is currently building Europe’s largest battery storage facility in Wiltshire. As Britain shifts to renewable energy, battery storage will be essential to the stability of the whole system. So who constructs it is a question that should concern us all.

And yet, true to form, the chairman of China Huaneng Group, Shu Yinbiao, is also the company’s Communist Party secretary. To be fair to Shu, he certainly isn’t as involved as the company’s former boss Li Xiaopeng, the “princeling” son of the former prime minister Li Peng, known as the Butcher of Beijing after he sent in the tanks to crush students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Li Xiaopeng, who remains on the board of China Huaneng, is now a top Communist Party official in Beijing, a member of the Central Committee of the CCP and Xi Jinping’s Minister of Transport.

However, the security risk of China’s investment in the generation of Britain’s electricity pales in comparison to the threat it poses to Britain’s electricity distribution system, the transmission networks that get the electrons from the power plants to the power points in your home.

Here, Britain already had a serious problem. When the London Electricity Board was privatised in 1990, it was bought by an American company, which was later sold to EDF, the French company, which in 2010 was bought by Cheung Kong Group. This Hong Kong conglomerate is owned by the legendary billionaire Li Ka-shing.

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The shrewd tycoon has kept Beijing at arm’s length. But he has also been willing to get into bed with the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), the huge state-owned conglomerate known for its links with China’s military and intelligence services. One Western intelligence expert wrote that CITIC was “swarming with secret agents”. True or not, by operating as CITIC’s “long-term ally” and sponsor, Li Ka-shing facilitated the CCP’s venture into global capitalism: CITIC now owns a vast property portfolio across Western capitals, including a high-end residential development in Mayfair.

Since then, Li Ka-shing has passed control of the CK Group to his son Victor Li, who has further embedded the CCP within the company. In 2018 he was appointed an executive member of the the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, sometimes referred to as China’s upper house. A vital element of the CCP’s overseas influence operations, the Conference describes itself as “an organisation of the patriotic United Front of the Chinese people”.

But it is in Britain where Victor has reaped the most success. In addition to its monopoly on the supply of gas to the north of England and across Wales and southwest England, his CK Group also enjoys a monopoly on the supply of electricity to London through a company called UK Power Networks, the old London Electricity Board. It also controls electricity distribution in the south and south-east England.

Such a startling fact bears repeating: CK Group, with its close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, is responsible for supplying electricity to everything that makes London function — its road transport system, its rail network, its office buildings, ATMs and even the Bank of England. Imagine if CK Group were to be weaponised: all of these and more could suddenly grind to a halt. It’s a terrifying prospect, one that could have been plucked straight from a Hollywood playbook. All it would take is a phone call from Beijing, a flick of a button and much of Britain could descend into darkness.