Relations weighed in the balance

UK should focus on long-term cooperation opportunities and not let short-term politics try to dictate terms to China

An assessment of China-UK relations over the past decade would probably be a positive one.

The United Kingdom's total exports of goods and services to China rose from 20 billion pounds ($26 billion) in 2011 to 45 billion pounds in 2019, while imports grew from 41 billion pounds to 60 billion pounds. This is a 71 percent increase in overall trade, and a reduction in the UK's deficit from 21 billion pounds to 15 billion pounds (as a proportion of total trade, the deficit has shrunk from 33 percent to 14 percent).

Investment flows have grown too. The UK has been the largest recipient of Chinese foreign direct investment in Europe, and－as the recent purchase of British Steel by Jingye Group, which is located in Hebei province, shows－this can help protect jobs and businesses. The controversy over Chinese investment in the UK is disproportionate to its actual scale, still a small part of FDI stock.

Over the past five years, the number of Chinese students in the UK has grown, from 90,000 in 2014/15 to 120,000 in 2018/19, an increase of 35 percent. Tourism has also expanded, with 1 million Chinese visitors to the UK in 2019, five times more than in 2009. In the short term, the novel coronavirus will have an impact on these numbers, but the longer-term potential should remain robust.

The net impact of all this on the UK has been positive. A recent research report by Cambridge Econometrics for the China-Britain Business Council found that trade, tourism and students had created well over 100,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the UK.

Other areas of cooperation have also grown, from intellectual property protection to science and innovation exchanges. Dealing with environmental and climate challenges has also moved up the bilateral policy agenda.

But over recent weeks and months bilateral relations have again entered a challenging phase.

The turning point was the announcement by the UK government in the middle of July that it would reverse the decision it made in January to allow Huawei to continue to have a managed role in the UK's 5G networks. That came shortly after London's critical response to the new national security law for Hong Kong.

These developments have taken place in the context of intensifying hostility in the US-China relationship, as Washington seeks to attack China on multiple fronts. In the UK, the political debate on China has been shifting, and since early 2020, the critical voices have come to the fore. For some, China has taken over from Brexit as the top political cause.

All of this creates a serious challenge for the UK in devising a post-Brexit China strategy. London's approach toward China over recent years had been to engage economically and commercially to deliver benefit to the UK, to work together as much as possible on global challenges such as climate change, and at the same time to protect the UK's national security while being open about disagreements on issues such as human rights.

This approach is now under attack from those in UK policy circles who want an approach more similar to the full-on hawkishness of the current US administration. Needless to say, Washington has been lobbying heavily for such a turnabout in London's approach.

Recent decisions on China by the UK government need to be seen in this context. At a time of uncertainty, the steps taken over last month are more a reaction to events and to immediate political pressures than a strategic change of direction, even though they may have strategic consequences which will create challenges further down the line.

The question is whether these short-term political pressures will win out over the underlying fundamentals of a relationship which has delivered plenty of mutual benefit. Reflection on what bilateral ties have already delivered is being lost in the UK's current China debate.

Amid the challenges, one area where continued collaboration can bring real benefits is climate change and biodiversity.

Here China and the UK are in key positions in setting and managing the global agenda into 2021. The 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) was originally scheduled to be held this year in Kunming, Yunnan province, while the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) was to have taken place in Glasgow, Scotland. Despite the delays, their work remains crucial for the future of the planet.

Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed that the two countries should work closely together in leading global work on these issues.

Focusing relations on an agenda which is not just bilateral but global, with a view to delivering some clear results, could provide some ballast to the bilateral relationship. The political challenges are real, and currently raising strong emotions in the UK. But it is still possible for productive cooperation to be developed, whatever the immediate pressures.

The author is a senior consulting fellow on the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House and an assistant professor at the Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.