The foreign secretary, David Lammy, has arrived in Beijing on a state visit to China billed as a chance to improve the UK’s relationship with the world’s second-biggest economy.
The foreign office said Lammy would address global “challenges” such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the climate crisis during the visit, which comes as the new Labour government signals its willingness to cultivate closer ties with President Xi Jinping and to cooperate with China.
“As permanent members of the UN Security Council with major global economies, the UK and China are global players,” Lammy said. “Our relationship matters.”
But the fact that he is only the second British foreign secretary to visit China in six years highlights how far that relationship has been “soured by clashes”, said Reuters, over China’s human rights abuses, the draconian crackdown in Hong Kong, China’s support for Russia and its alleged espionage in Britain.
What did the commentators say?
Officials have denied that ministers are seeking “a reset” of relations with China. But clearly, this is a “distinct change in tack”, said Politico. Earlier this year, Rishi Sunak described China as the “greatest threat” to the UK’s economic security. Fast forward to this week, when Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said Britain “needs more engagement with China” – our sixth-largest trading partner, accounting for 5% of our total trade. Those comments “add to the impression that Labour is prepared to get closer to China” than many had anticipated before the election.
Lammy likely aims to ease tensions over trade (particularly the EU’s row with Beijing over electric vehicles) and court Chinese investment in the UK, as Labour “pushes desperately for growth to get it through a tricky set of economic circumstances“.
Not a reset then, but a “significant opportunity for a new beginning”, wrote John Quelch and David Gosset in China Daily – and one of mutual benefit. During the so-called “golden era”, trade between Britain and China “surged significantly”. Now, China’s recommitment to opening up is a “significant opportunity” for British exports of goods and services. There’s also “enormous potential for collaboration” on green technologies and sustainable development. As China continues to grow as an economic superpower, it would be a “strategic mistake” for the UK not to engage with it more deeply.
But we’re not sending the prime minister, are we, pointed out Mary Dejevsky in The Independent. The visit seems “ill-timed”, given MI5’s recent warning over “multiple efforts by China to steal data and information”, as well as China’s “increasingly assertive conduct” towards Taiwan.
Labour’s policy on China resembles Johnsonian “cake-ism”: that we can have trade and investment on our terms, but “berate China for its ‘behaviour’ (and it will listen)”. That reflects “an inflated sense of the UK’s capacity to influence” – and ignores the fact that China has been “largely impervious to outside influence for many a year”.
Some argue that Lammy will have an opportunity to condemn the Uighur genocide, demand that China ends modern slavery and tackles nefarious technology companies, said Rahima Mahmut in the same paper. But the issue of genocide will “certainly be off Lammy’s agenda”.
British officials have also “postponed” a visit from Taiwan’s former president, Madeleine Grant wrote in The Telegraph, while the European Parliament and countries such as France are welcoming her. This government is trying to pretend the UK can influence China while actively “appeasing” it.
So what’s the point of the trip? Lammy’s “biases” play a part. He is “a man obsessed with empty gestures and moralistic posturing”. He is so concerned with the “optics” of things that he is “blind to the very real threats”. Regardless of Labour’s softening towards Beijing, China remains the “greatest existential threat to the West since the USSR”.
What next?
This weekend’s visit is “not expected to yield major diplomatic agreements”, said Reuters, but it provides an opportunity for the Labour government to “show it is serious about engaging with China”.
This week the foreign office confirmed it had launched Lammy’s promised review of the UK’s relationship with China – to “very little fanfare”, said Politico. The audit intends to “set the direction” of the UK-China relationship, in Lammy’s words.