Prime minister Rishi Sunak has said that the UK must “evolve” its relationship with China, declaring that the “golden era” of relations between the countries is at an end.
Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Sunak added that the UK’s approach over the last decade - during which it sought closer economic ties with China - had been “naïve” and that it was time for government to show “robust pragmatism” in dealing with competing states.
However, the PM highlighted China’s standing as a significant economic power globally, and warned that this needed to be respected rather than have the UK become embroiled in “Cold War rhetoric”.
“We cannot simply ignore China's significance in world affairs - to global economic stability or issues like climate change,” Sunak said.
During recent protests in China against the country’s ‘Zero Covid’ policy and strict lockdown rules, a BBC journalist was detained for several hours while covering the demonstration and was physically assaulted by police.
After having acknowledged this attack, Sunak said that China clearly poses a "systemic challenge" to British values an interests and that this challenge was becoming greater.
“China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism," the prime minister said.
The PM also played down the idea that continuing to promote closer UK-China trade could pave the way for political change in China, given the strained relations between London and Beijing after years of having pursued such a policy.
Instead, Sunak said that the UK would work with allies in the West and East, including the US, Canada, Australia and Japan, to “manage” what he called “sharpening competition”, including through “diplomacy and engagement”.
Sunak continued: “It means standing up to our competitors, not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism.”
Sunak’s words came in the wake of pressure from the backbenches of his party to take a more hardline stance on China, but some do not believe the PM went far enough.
Former Tory chief Iain Duncan Smith said that there was an “endless litany” of unacceptable conduct on China’s part and suggested that a “robustly pragmatic” approach was unlikely to “worry the Chinese one bit.”
Nigel Inkster from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a foreign affairs think tank, told the BBC that the “golden age” of UK-China trade had never been “real and substantial” and simply sidelined geopolitics by trying to improve economic relations.
“Experience shows you simply can't do that,” Inkster explained.
“China in its present form is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and I think the Marxist-Leninist dialogue is only going to increase so we are going to have to learn to get used to this,” he added.
The prime minister and Chinese president Xi Jinping were scheduled to meet at the G20 summit in Indonesia for the first time, but the meeting was called off following the detonation of a missile in Poland near the country’s border with war-torn Ukraine.
During the speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Sunak pledged to continue supporting the besieged Eastern European country for “as long as it takes” to win its fight against Russia, saying that the UK would “maintain or increase” military aid to the country in 2023.
