After the Golden Age: Resetting UK-China Engagement Conceptualising a UK-China Engagement Strategy
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British Foreign Policy Group Supporting national engagement on UK Foreign Policy British Foreign Policy Group After the Golden Age Resetting UK-China Engagement Sophia Gaston and Rana Mitter bfpg.co.uk | July 2020 Table of Contents Conceptualising a UK-China Engagement Strategy .....................................................................3 Introduction ...........................................................................................................................................4 Contentious Areas of Engagement .................................................................................................9 UK-China Relations in the Global Britain Period .......................................................................20 Understanding China ........................................................................................................................26 Manufacturing Consent: Public Opinion, Political Parties and the Media .........................39 Spotlight on Australia ........................................................................................................................46 Conclusions and Recommendations ...........................................................................................56 End Notes and References .............................................................................................................60 2 | The British Foreign Policy Group | After the Golden Age: Resetting UK-China Engagement Conceptualising a UK-China Engagement Strategy This report provides a conceptual framework for developing a UK-China Engagement Strategy, to underpin the full spectrum of our relations with China. It is both inwardly and outwardly facing, exploring the ways in which the UK state, businesses, education institutions and citizens will need to strengthen their resilience to China’s influence and potential incursions, while also setting out the productive forms of engagement that could continue to flourish between Britain and China in the future. It gives thought to the poorly understood historical, social, economic and geopolitical motivations of China, and how these are likely to evolve over the short and medium term, as well as the lessons that can be gleaned from the experiences of the Australian Government in their own rapidly evolving relations with China. The report’s primary objective is to help to build a more constructive, informed and realistic form of engagement with China – a nation whose interests and values will often continue to diverge from our own. It seeks to chart a better balance between complacency and paranoia – frankly assessing the myriad risks posed by the Chinese authoritarian state to the United Kingdom’s security and sovereignty, and to the democratic world order, while also better highlighting the areas where economic, diplomatic and education partnerships could reap mutual benefits. The authors have made every effort to strike a pragmatic and measured tone, in the face of a dramatically escalating political conversation. As ever, writing about an evolving relationship and current affairs mean that certain aspects of the report may be resolved or superseded over the coming weeks and months. Nonetheless, they hope that others – whether China experts, hawks or novices – will find this report a useful contribution to the important public debate around the UK’s relationship with China in the 21st Century. With thanks to Evie Aspinall, Katarina Kosmala-Dahlbeck and Nadia Nelson, for their exceptional assistance in bringing this report to publication. All mistakes are the authors’ own. The Authors Sophia Gaston is the Director of the British Foreign Policy Group, and a social and political researcher specialising in public opinion. Her research particularly explores populism, nationalism and the rise of anti-establishment movements, as well as broader threats to governance in Western nations. Through the British Foreign Policy Group, she works to highlight the domestic social and political origins of the destabilising forces in the international world order. Sophia has previously worked for government in Australia on economic, citizenship and international policy, including supporting political engagement with Chinese officials and the Chinese diaspora. Sophia is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Global Affairs at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an Academic Fellow at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. [email protected] Rana Mitter OBE FBA is the Director of the University China Centre, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, and a Fellow of St Cross College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books, including China’s War with Japan: The Struggle for Survival, 1937-1945 (Penguin, 2013), which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020). He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics "Meanwhile in Beijing" is available on BBC Sounds. [email protected] After the Golden Age: Resetting UK-China Engagement | The British Foreign Policy Group | 3 Introduction Contemporary Political and Diplomatic Context The UK’s political and diplomatic relationship with China has experienced constant flux and evolution over the past decade, with the COVID-19 pandemic further enhancing the already rising prominence of China-scepticism within Westminster. The primary political concerns regarding China relate to three specific spheres: the potential security risks posed by partnerships with China-led companies; the challenge in balancing the economic opportunities presented by China’s rising economic strength and its authoritarian system; and the diplomatic capacities of influence held by the United Kingdom, and our allies, to advocate on human rights and other international law disputes with China within its territory and the broader Asia-Pacific region. The substance of the political conversation around China has become increasingly fractious, with China hawks warning of the authoritarian state’s ambitions for global dominance, and China itself – and its firms operating in Western markets – presenting its intentions as simply benevolent, humanitarian and arguing that more controversial issues are relevant only to its own domestic sphere. The strength of the former position lies in its acknowledgement that much of the goodwill expressed by Western allies over previous decades towards China was predicated on simplistic expectations that economic growth and prosperity would inevitably lead the nation to adopt a more liberal, democratic model of governance, and aspire to become a trusted global actor. Instead, China is now often framed as an entirely malevolent presence, with plans to assume not only the United States’ traditional economic hegemony, but also its long-established role as the moral compass of the world order. The latter position is a reminder that China’s claims have to be acknowledged, rather than automatically treated as illegitimate, even when they should be vigorously disputed. Yet neither of these frames help to advance the UK’s understanding of a complex nation with an utterly distinct approach to its national governance and international relations, nor do they provide a pathway around which the UK can reasonably formulate an engagement strategy. It is patently clear that China has not taken a path towards a more liberal, democratic future, and that in many ways, its economic strength enables it to deepen its authoritarian behaviour at home, and its confidence in advancing its interests in its region and beyond. Moreover, its presence in many multilateral institutions has led to a significant drift away from liberalism within them, and that both the ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ of Western influence are rapidly being eroded. Yet, to condemn China as entirely preoccupied with a zero-sum game towards world domination misses something important about the essence of its ambitions, not least in terms of its own domestic security – which historically, has been under frequent threat from the West – and risks rendering this vision a self-fulfilling prophecy. Another approach must be identified, one which respects the genuine potential risks China poses to the UK’s values and security interests and acknowledges the troubled public mood towards the authoritarian state, and which also enables room for constructive engagement on an economic level and towards shared global challenges – such as climate change and international trade. One of the most crucial aspects of any UK-China Engagement Strategy must centre around better preparing the UK Government to take choices in the nation’s interest – setting out a clear, consistent and principled framework that allows for nuanced, but timely decisions, which can be clearly communicated to the British people. Over recent years, there have been a number of issues where the security dimensions of Chinese investment have been called into question, and the UK Government has struggled to chart a course through these decisions in a manner that feels both grounded in a clear set of principles, 4 | The British Foreign Policy Group | After the Golden Age: Resetting UK-China Engagement Introduction and also which allows