Opinion | Can the UK reset its ties with China
By Tom Fowdy
Last week, as predicted, the Labour Party won a landslide in the UK general election and swept aside the government of Rishi Sunak, inflicting a historic defeat on his Conservative Party. The victory ends a 14-year stint by the previous government that had been largely defined by political turmoil, chaos, scandal, and economic malaise. With a massive majority, it is hoped that Keir Starmer will deliver on offering the country a fresh start.
At the same time, it is also hoped that the new government will be more sensible regarding Britain's relationship with the wider world. The previous government's foreign policy had been effectively destroyed Brexit, which not only drove the party to the right, but emulated into an approach dictated by Anglosphere exceptionalism and Imperial nostalgia, following the United States at all costs. Although not the sole factor, this became a major factor in the deterioration of Britain's relationship with China.
While US pressure would have existed irrespectively, the government's obsession with pursuing a "trade deal" with America at all costs, something Washington never taken any interest in due to its protectionist consensus, lead to an unacceptable diminishing of Britain's own strategic independence and the total negation of the reality that China remains a critical economic and trade partner of the UK. Indeed, Boris Johnson had initially pursued a pro-China foreign policy and I will never forget his "I love China" publicised phone call with Xi Jinping in February 2020 offering them support for the pandemic.
This tweet sends shivers down my spine because it is the last gasp of a dying world. Just weeks later the virus would strike the UK, the government would flip its foreign policy on China as infamously depicted by a scathing Daily Mail leak titled: "NO.10 FURY AT BEIJING'S LIES" and the rest was history. The Anti-China era had begun and the golden era was over, the Boris Johnson now found it politically convenient to scapegoat Beijing for its own failures and across the coming years this would happen many, many times, especially as the incompetence and malpractice of his government was exposed.
But even with this government gone, the world has changed. The US successfully utilised a host of other wedge issues which destroyed the UK's relationship with China, including fermenting unrest in Hong Kong, weaponizing allegations of Xinjiang and of course the ultimate tipping point: The war in Ukraine. The paradigm of geopolitics had irreversibly shifted towards ideological and power-based competition between states and of course in such a capacity the UK cannot "choose." It is what it is, and even irrespective of the government in power, mainstream media outlets such as the BBC continue to promulgate relentless negativity aimed at China every single day.
There is no logical to believe that a Keir Starmer would, or even could, shift this. After all, Starmer is a man who has just spent the past five years relentlessly purging the Labour "Anti-War" left and stamping anyone out of the party who has been overtly critical of the west, or Israel, even including the former leader Jeremy Corbyn himself. He has taken the position of a "Blairite", a centrist position that usually espouses a highly Atlanticist and NeoConservative foreign policy. Almost immediately in the first days, Starmer and his Foreign Secretary David Lammy also immediately undertaken the rite of passage of pledging support for Ukraine and talking with their counterparts. The legacy foreign policy is to be preserved.
So where does that leave China? We should not expect a return to the "golden era", but we should at least have some hope for a moderation or maturity in how relations are conducted. As stated above, US pressure and paradigm shaping is a big factor, but likewise the previous government used China and fear of it thereafter a scapegoat for their own failures. We are likely to see less of this. Similarly, the new government is likely to be slightly more pragmatic in its foreign affairs and has already ended the "Brexit chauvinist" approach of the Conservatives, vowing to recommit to engagement with Europe again, and therefore by default ending the nonsensical pursuit of ideological trade deals with America.
With this in mind, we can calculate the new government will be slightly more open to cooperation and trade relations with China, and will also dampen down the "yellow peril" rhetoric the preceding government so frequently weaponised. A hopeful example as to how things may play out is that of Anthony Albanese's government in Australia, who ended the equally erratic and destructive approach of Scott Morrison. Albanese of course, is still pro-US, he has to be, but the difference between the two shows that rhetoric, temperament and maturity in foreign relations matter greatly, and the China-Australia relationship has been made stable again in spite of differences. I am hoping for the same with the United Kingdom. The two countries have a lot to gain from having stable, cooperative and cordial ties.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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