There’s an old joke about a lost traveller asking how to reach their destination. The local they stop helpfully tells them: “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” The foreign secretary made it to Beijing on Wednesday, but finds himself in something of the same situation when it comes to China policy. In a report published the same day, the foreign affairs committee rightly diagnosed a lack of coherence in the UK government’s approach to date. James Cleverly began from an unenviable position. For too long, the west…
Tag: Foreign policy
Western politicians face tough balancing act on visits to Beijing
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, on Wednesday described his government’s relationship with Beijing as “complicated and sophisticated”. He said the UK’s approach was “clear-eyed” and pragmatic, neither seeking to isolate the world’s second largest economy nor shying away from raising disagreements. The balancing act may prove difficult. Cleverly is the latest in a series of western government officials – from the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to the French president, Emmanuel Macron – to have visited China in recent months hoping to repair soured relations and trade ties.…
The London art student whose Chinese political slogan mural caused a storm
When Wang Hanzheng, a Chinese student at the Royal College of Art, attended a graduate show in a warehouse on Brick Lane in east London in July, he found the space crowded, unimaginative and unfit for presenting art. It was with this in mind that at 11pm one night earlier this month Wang and a team of 22 others painted a Chinese political slogan in bold red characters along a nearby wall stretching nearly 100 metres. The artwork – which spelled out the Chinese government’s “socialist core values”, including the…
UK should take China to task on human rights and Taiwan, MPs say
Britain must take a tougher stance on China over its severe human rights abuses and help Taiwan build its defences to deter a potential attack from Beijing, an influential group of MPs says. With the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, scheduled to land in China on Wednesday for a first official visit in five years, a report from the foreign affairs select committee says ministers have to call out the country’s transnational repression. China’s behaviour is a threat to world security that cannot be ignored, it says. The Chinese Communist party…
UK foreign secretary to challenge China over support for Russia in Ukraine war
The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, will challenge Chinese officials in Beijing on Wednesday over their growing military support for Russia, but is intent that his meetings are seen as the renewal of a political dialogue that eventually revives UK trade with China. Before the meetings, he said no major international issue could be solved without China but added that the country had to live up to its international commitments and obligations. No significant global problem – from climate change to pandemic prevention, from economic instability to nuclear proliferation –…
China wants to erase Tibet. Will Britain stay quiet about this crime? | Simon Tisdall
Last week’s US sanctioning of Chinese officials involved in Beijing’s ongoing criminal efforts to erase Tibet as a separate political, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious entity showed America at its best. Few other governments give a hoot. Most cravenly look the other way. Citing a recent UN report on the “forced assimilation” of one million Tibetan children ordered into Mandarin-language state boarding schools far from their homes and families, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, demanded China stop trying to eradicate Tibet’s distinct identity. “We urge PRC [People’s Republic…
HSBC executive apologises for calling UK weak over China
A senior executive at HSBC has apologised after saying the “weak” UK government had caved in to the US in its approach to doing business with China. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the bank’s head of public affairs and a former British diplomat, said sorry after “sharing his personal views” on Britain’s policy towards Beijing at a private event, a spokesperson for HSBC said. They added that Cowper-Coles’s comments were made under the Chatham House rule, a longstanding convention that means those in attendance cannot attribute remarks at an event to individual…
How can the west best tackle the threat from China? First, it must stop panicking | Kerry Brown
In the figure of Xi Jinping, with his dominant political personality and assertive communicative style, many in the west have found the autocrat they always feared would one day confront them. For Xi and the people around him, combatting what his administration calls “western universalism”, and western attempts to infiltrate China’s politics through economic and cultural engagement, has been a major task. Now the Xi threat has come right into our own back yard. A recent report by the British parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) defines the nature of…
Labour plans new taskforce to target contractors linked to hostile nations
Contractors linked to hostile foreign powers such as China will be targeted by a new security taskforce if Labour wins the next general election. In a joint initiative from the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the new body will aim to anticipate risks to Britain’s national security. It comes just days after the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, said China represents the “largest state-based threat” to Britain’s economic security. The government intervened in eight attempted takeovers of UK firms by Chinese buyers last year…
China engaged in ‘whole of state’ assault on UK, report says
China’s state institutions are aggressively targeting the UK, putting the country on course for a nightmare scenario that represents not just a commercial challenge but an existential threat to liberal democratic systems, parliament’s influential all-party intelligence and security committee has found. The inquiry – launched in 2019 and subject to various delays was completed in May – is scathing about the failure of the UK to wake up to the scale of the systemic challenge posed by the Chinese government’s “whole of state” assault on the British economy, politics, civil…