Britain’s China policy after Brexit: Based on pragmatism or values first?

As Britain develops its Indo-Pacific Strategy, Taiwan is increasingly becoming its partner in Asia. Given that the United States views Taiwan as a security partner in the region, and that the United Kingdom closely follows the US on security issues, strengthening its relationship with Taiwan will be a possibility in the future. Then Prime Minister Truss has said that NATO needs to expand its global perspective beyond its member states: “We must ensure that democracies like Taiwan can defend themselves”, she said [29].

There is also an unprecedented growth in support for Taiwan in the British Parliament. However, mainland of China will not allow this breakaway autonomous region to secede from Chinese sovereignty, and ensuring that Taiwan does not become independent from the mainland has always been the bottom line of China's most central interest. When Britain imitates the US in potentially violating China's bottom line, Sino-British relations will be in an extremely dangerous situation, so Taiwan affairs will be the most sensitive issue of British policy toward China.

Conclusion: Prospects of the UK's China Policy and implication

for China-West Relations

From era of Theresa May's cabinet to nowadays, various British governments have gradually adjusted their policies toward China, and the “golden era” of China-UK relationship has passed in a flash, entering an era of increasing conflicts and challenges in bilateral relations. On the whole, the current British policy toward China is still in the adjustment stage, and domestic disputes and games on China policy are still ongoing. Nevertheless, the macro direction of Britain's China policy in the future should form a bilateral relationship in which cooperation is accompanied by contradictions and competition.

Firstly, despite the many contradictions, Sino-British economic and trade relations remain strong. According to the UK statistics, the UK's imports from China amounted to 67.6 billion pounds in the year 2021 through June, a rise of nearly 40 % from the previous year. That makes China the UK's third largest trading partner [46]. Their close economic and trade ties that have developed over the years will not be completely broken overnight, or else, which would be difficult for a “Global Britain” that has left the EU and is seeking to enhance its economic development in the wider international market. Furthermore, China is an important actor in international markets and the UK can use China's market to access a larger international markets. For example, UK companies have welcomed China's ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement for the Asia-Pacific region, as they are interested in China's position in the RCEP, which offers new possibilities for UK traders to do business in a third market in the region [47].

Secondly, there is still a need for the necessary cooperation between China and the UK in a number of important areas, including global health cooperation and cooperation in the area of climate change. As a global power, it is a necessary option for the West to cooperate with China to address these major global issues which cannot be achieved by a single country [48] and there is plenty of scope for other cooperation in many other areas (e. g. financial services) [49]. In short, the benefits of cooperation are an important factor that makes it impossible for the UK to completely ignore China or abandon cooperation with it.

Thirdly, beyond the above-mentioned cooperation, of course, given the profound changes in the international situation, Britain's conflicts with China in the ideological, human rights and geopolitical spheres will accumulate in the coming years, and friction in Sino-British relations will increase. This will change and worsen Sino-British relations in general. Therefore, in the future, UK policy towards China will maintain a flexible balance between pragmatic cooperation in the economic, trade and global governance spheres and conflict in the political and security spheres, in order to serve the UK's overall national interests. Sino-British relations will also become unstable under this British China policy and will move forward with difficulty with instability.

Fourthly, to some extent, China-UK relations partly reflect the relationship between China and the West. At present, the overall relationship between China and the West, like that between China and the UK, is in a period of profound adjustment. This is mainly due to the fact that Western countries have adjusted their policies towards China in the context of changes of international situation. Almost all of them regard China as a “partner, competitor, rival or threat”. The overall relationship between China and the West will become more complex and unstable than ever before, just like that of China-UK relations.

In this context, China and the West will maintain economic cooperation in non-security and non-sensitive areas and seek cooperation in global governance. However, the West is not a piece undifferentiated as a whole, which means there are still differences between China-UK relations and China's relations with the US, the EU or Australia. In this sense, China cannot treat the West as a whole, and needs to deal with bilateral relations with different Western countries in a different and pragmatic manners.

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