Last month, the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy paid a low-key, two day visit to China, in the hope, according to the Foreign Office (FCDO), of bringing consistency to the bilateral relationship. Under recent Tory governments, UK policy towards China lurched from Cameron and Osborne’s “golden era” to Sunak’s perception that Beijing was the “greatest threat”. The prize for the most unusual episode goes to the filming of a propaganda travelogue starring Boris Johnson’s father Stanley and brother Max, financed by the Chinese government in a deal agreed while Johnson was still prime minister.
Labour has said it wants a fresh start after these wild fluctuations. It seems to want a strategy, instead of relying on the current three-word approach to China—“cooperate, compete, challenge”. In pursuit of such a plan, Labour announced a “comprehensive audit” of the UK-China relationship “within 100 days”. We are still waiting. Meanwhile, developments in the EU and the United States threaten to make an already delicate task even harder.
Labour’s three words pull in different directions, as does the widely copied Biden administration mantra of “invest, align, compete” and the EU version that describes China as a partner, an economic competitor and a systemic rival. The unresolved question in all these formulae is which word predominates? The indications so far are that on the contentious bilateral issues of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the UK will not allow “challenge” to interfere with the hopes for cooperation.
Apart from a phone call in August between Keir Starmer and Xi Jinping, there had been no high-level UK exchanges with China for nearly five years. Lammy’s visit was hailed in Beijing as a welcome reset of relations, despite Lammy’s strong criticism of China’s mass internment and forced labour policies against Xinjiang’s Uyghur population when he was in opposition. The FCDO assures us that, in between trying to warm up the economic relationship, the foreign secretary did raise Xinjiang in his meetings with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and first vice premier Ding Xuexiang. The chances of his honouring the promise he made last year, however, that a Labour government would seek recognition of China’s actions in Xinjiang as “genocide through the international courts,” do not seem high.
The case of Jimmy Lai was also raised, but the high-profile UK citizen, businessman and former newspaper publisher continues to face national security charges in Hong Kong, in a judicial process that stretches any definition of fair to breaking point.
On Taiwan, we learned little from Lammy’s visit, beyond the routine Chinese insistence that it is an internal affair and no business of the UK. The British government offered only the unilluminating statement that the UK had adhered to the commitments it had made on Taiwan. But four days before the foreign secretary was shaking hands in Beijing, China launched a large-scale military exercise that encircled Taiwan—a display of strength designed both to intimidate and to demonstrate China’s ability to blockade the island, should it choose to. Two days after Lammy’s visit, China conducted live fire exercises in Taiwan Strait, a key shipping lane through which an estimated one fifth of global maritime trade, worth $2.45 trillion, passes each year.
The UK, like other liberal democracies, insists that the dispute between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China should be resolved “through dialogue, in line with the views of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.” China’s intimidation, therefore, might have offered the Labour government a golden opportunity to reiterate that position. Instead, the week before Lammy took off for Beijing, it asked the recent ex-president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, to “postpone” a planned visit to the UK, making it clear to Beijing that the new government was willing to sideline Taiwan in the hope of an economic reward that may or may not materialise.
In China, Lammy talked encouragingly about the need to cooperate on global issues such as climate change. Wang Yi has, however, ruled out the possibility of carving out climate change from other issues in bilateral relationships, a statement that signals China’s willingness to instrumentalise climate in pursuit of other goals.
A number of increasingly awkward developments will demand some difficult balancing between the UK’s relations with China, the US and the EU.
Last week, after a year-long investigation of government subsidies, the EU voted to implement tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles of up to 45 per cent. In response, China has ordered its auto manufacturers to pause substantial investments in those EU countries that support the tariffs, to strengthen its hand in its continuing discussions with Brussels. The UK has not taken a position on tariffs on Chinese cars, to the dismay of its own auto industry—but it risks finding itself increasingly marginalised as it tries to balance the conflicting demands of Beijing and Brussels.
Conflicts between the UK’s relationship with the US and its relationship with China are likely to become more severe with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Confrontation with China is a bipartisan issue in the US, but the Trump win risks spotlighting the tensions in the UK’s position: London needs to maintain a close security and defence relationship with the US, a need reinforced by Trump’s repeated threats to undermine Nato. But the Labour government will face Trump tariffs on imports from the UK and also wants to strike a more conciliatory tone towards Beijing in pursuit of investment. The Trump administration is likely to escalate demands that allies either fall into line with US policy, or feel the weight of his displeasure.
Lammy’s interlocutors in Beijing were in no doubt of the difficulty of his government’s position. The UK has a weak hand to play in an increasingly complex game and cannot expect much sympathy in Beijing unless it is willing to put some distance in its relations with the US. “Competition among major powers should not be the backdrop of this era,” foreign minister Wang Yi said. He did not need to add that if the UK chooses to stay close to the US, it can expect few favours from China.
