Themes: how China-UK relationships have developed; China’s engagement with the UK; the UK’s current objectives; how the UK’s China strategy compares to the EU and US.
Concise commentary on complex issues from different points of view.
The UKNCC Guest Contributor Programme offers contrasting ‘short, sharp reads’ for those seeking a fuller exploration of key questions. This issue explores:
Does the UK now have a China strategy?”
Authors, alphabetically by surname:
- Dr Winnie King, Senior Lecturer in Chinese International Political Economy, University of Bristol
- Ruby Osman, Senior Geopolitical Researcher & Eddie Knight, Geopolitical Researcher, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Contact us at:
perspective.ukncc@pm.me
Does the UK now have a China Strategy?
Dr Winnie King
Senior Lecturer in Chinese International Political Economy
University of Bristol
September 2023
The UK National Committee on China (UKNCC) Guest Contributor Programme highlights contrasting responses, by leading authors, to key questions posed by the UKNCC. The programme is designed to stimulate a deeper exploration of China related issues; drive curiosity; and test conventional wisdom.
Contact us at:
perspective.ukncc@pm.me
Response 1 of 2
In September 2021 the House of Lords’ International Relations and Defence Committee published a paper examining UK-China relations, labelling the security and trade relationship a “strategic void.” Responding to the Integrated Review (IR), the paper raised questions about what labelling China as both a “systemic competitor” and a “systemic challenge to UK security, prosperity and values” means. It called for greater clarity on the government’s next steps. Furthermore, given that China is identified as “the biggest statebased threat to UK economic security,” it also asked how these seemingly conflicting and competing interests would be resolved given the IR’s inclination towards deeper trade and investment relations.
Published in March, the Integrated Review Refresh (IRR) has been touted as offering greater clarity and insight on relations with China, and providing answers where previously there were but mere indicators. With rising geopolitical tensions following military action and war in Ukraine, the Refresh has moved away from grand concepts such as “Global Britain.”
Instead, it has established a more longterm oriented approach to UK national security concerns – firstly by “strengthening domestic security and resilience” and – secondly – embedding UK values as sources of strength and comparative advantage through the promotion of an open society and democratic values on the international stage. In other words, the IRR has set out to balance the changing geopolitics of the world’s major powers by prioritising UK national interests. These interests include human rights, labour protection, national security, as well as broader UK interests on the international stage such as the protection and promotion of a rulesbased order embodied in multilateral organisations like the UN.
It is important to note that a strategy is first and foremost characterised by a plan of action – and one that can be measured. By acknowledging, and to a certain extent accepting, China’s “epoch-defining” role in the current global strategic environment, the IRR does offer a basic framework for a UK China strategy, but one with limitations.
With regards to China, the IRR proposes an approach which is “anchored in our core national interests and our higher interest in an open and stable international order.” In the area of cooperation and collaboration, the focus is on economics (trade and investment) and transnational issues such as climate change and global health. It includes maintaining productive economic relations with the world’s second largest economy. Pursuing this path is to lead to significant opportunities and advantages for the UK, all the while protecting national security and values.
Such a framework is however distinctly different from policy. Policy involves a set of common rules and regulations for routine decisions. While these core national interests are pursued through the three interrelated strands of “Protect, Align and Engage,” the IRR does not offer a China strategy with substantive guidelines within which to realise and actualise these objectives.
An effective and substantive China strategy needs the following questions to be asked and answered: What does the UK want from its relationship with the PRC? What key national principles and interests are reflected in these objectives? What priorities does it have? What are we willing to commit to? To sacrifice? How are we going to achieve this?
The IR and IRR both acknowledge and offer some insight into the above questions. As the following examples illustrate, however, key gaps in realising the China strategy lie in the areas of commitment and in identifying which sacrifices the UK is willing to make. One such case is the UK’s crossdepartmental China Capabilities Programme and the doubling of funding to boost language training and understanding of China’s cultural, economic, and military policy. With extensive needs for capacity-building and strengthening the UK’s understanding of China, the resources committed are still far from adequate, with the budget earmarked only for 2024-2025.
The limitations of the IRR-informed China strategy are further revealed in areas where objectives and values overlap, in particular in cases where both economics and national security are in play. In such circumstances, inconsistencies, U-turns, and lack of transparency have become a common trait in the governing of relations with China. The cases of the Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), and Sino-UK Civil Nuclear Cooperation projects (Hinkley Point C, Bradwell and Sizewell), are illustrations of where economic cooperation was subsequently overshadowed by considerations of national security. Commitment and sacrifice turn out to be the weak links in the strategy.
The former case involved Chineseowned Nexperia’s acquisition of NWF in July 2021. After facing over 16 months of scrutiny, Nexperia was eventually forced to sell the majority of its stake in what is the UK’s largest semiconductor chip factory due to security concerns. Drawing the ire of China’s Foreign Ministry, this retroactive decision under the newlyestablished National Security and Investment Act came after months of procedural delays. It was also revealed that a review of the original acquisition in July 2021, by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s National Security Advisor never took place. This suggested a seeming unwillingness by the government to commit to a decision. Such lack of clarity and commitment remains unresolved under the IRR, limiting the efficacy of any potential China strategy.
The UK’s Civil Nuclear Cooperation projects with China highlight this further. Under one of the flagship agreements during David Cameron’s “Golden Era” of Sino-UK relations in October 2015, China General Nuclear (CGN) took a 33.5% stake in Hinkley Point C in Somerset in return for financing.
Under the deal, EDF and CGN also planned to build a replica EPR plant at Sizewell C in Suffolk and a new plant at Bradwell in Essex, using China’s HPR1000 (Hualong One) reactor technology. Within nine months however, Hinkley Point C was being reassessed, only to be given the green light again in September 2016 by then Prime Minister Theresa May. The national security concerns and implications of China’s investment in national strategic infrastructure returned again at the end of 2022. While CGN was paid £100 million to exit Sizewell C, it remains a minority investor in Hinkley Point C. Furthermore, in February 2022 UK regulators approved the Chinesedesigned Hualong One nuclear reactor for potential use at Bradwell. While the national security rationale may hold, the question of strategic cost and consistency remains.
Strategic goals and objectives can be achieved through flexible and indirect means—and the hierarchy of priorities may shift and adapt depending on need and context.
However, in the planning process, the UK’s China strategy within the framework of IRR ignores one key factor – the intentions of the partner (aka China). There are consequences to inconsistency. Namely, will China continue to be a willing player?
In his visit to Beijing at the end of August 2023, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly stressed that the UK has a “pragmatic sensible working relationship with China because of the issues that affect us all around the globe.” He also highlighted the need to “re-establish lines of communication.” Cleverly’s visit was received quite positively by the Chinese media. However, in the absence of reliable and committed relations, any dialogue between the UK and China will be overshadowed by geopolitical sabre-rattling. The Foreign Secretary’s wish to build a relationship based on mutual trust will remain just that – a wish.
Under the IRR, engagement with China should not come at the expense of UK values. However, as long as national interests are applied with insufficient nuance the principal pillars of the IRR will undermine any prospects of mutual trust and foment instability in Sino-UK relations. Any China strategy will be characterised by little more than inconsistencies, contradictions, and U-turns. It will end before it has even had a chance to begin.
About the Author
Winnie King is Senior Lecturer in Chinese International Political Economy at the University of Bristol, with a specialisation in Chinese strategies of economic development, financial liberalisation and reform (with specific reference to Renminbi Internationalisation), and has been working on Sino-UK relations and economic policy and Britain’s China policy for over ten years. She consults extensively on Chinese economic and development policy, and the impact that both domestic and international factors play in its decision-making process, and advises on Taiwan-China relations and Greater China Economic regionalisation. Dr. King has a DPhil from the University of Oxford, St. Antony’s College. She is currently working on China’s Nuclear and Energy Strategy, and contributing to a piece on China and its Rare Earth’s strategy.
About the UKNCC
We help leaders make better decisions on China by providing Learning & Development programmes & Pathfinder Dialogues.
In an era witnessing a rise of misinformation, polarising politics and divisive media, the decisionmaking context on matters related to China is extremely complex.
Since the end of the ‘Golden Era‘, the discourse on China in the U.K. has become dominated by hawks, apologists, and special interest groups pursuing narrow agendas. Recognising that there was a market failure in the U.K. in fostering a national China-facing capability, the UKNCC was established in 2020.
Today, UKNCC is Britain’s leading independent educational non-profit on China. As a community interest company (CIC), UKNCC is also Britain’s only China-focused organisation that is legally prohibited from lobbying under U.K. law.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in the UKNCC Guest Contributor Programme are of each author and do not
represent those of UKNCC as an organisation or of any individual associated with it.
Copyright © 2024 UK National Committee on China CIC (Company number 13040199) All Rights Reserved.
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Does the UK now have a China Strategy?
Ruby Osman
Senior Geopolitical Researcher
Eddie Knight
Geopolitical Researcher
Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
September 2023
The UK National Committee on China (UKNCC) Guest Contributor Programme highlights contrasting responses, by leading authors, to key questions posed by the UKNCC. The programme is designed to stimulate a deeper exploration of China related issues; drive curiosity; and test conventional wisdom.
Response 2 of 2
Contact us at:
perspective.ukncc@pm.me
It’s been a busy year so far for China strategies. In France, President Macron is figuring out where China fits in his push for European “strategic autonomy”, while in Brussels, President von der Leyen has called on the EU to “de-risk” its relations. Germany has gone so far as to publish its very own ‘China strategy’. President Biden is pushing forward with increasingly ambitious attempts at critical tech decoupling – now also rechristened ‘derisking’ – while in Australia a new Labour government is attempting to stabilise relations with Beijing.
These are a wide-ranging set of strategies, but they have one thing in common: a shared recognition that, after a pivotal few years, the ways we engage with China are due a rethink.
The UK has gradually been coming to the same realisation too: a visit from Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to Beijing in August set high-level, in-person diplomacy back in motion after a near five-year hiatus, whilst March’s Integrated Review Refresh and a landmark speech from Cleverly in late April both aimed to set out where the UK stands on China.
The question is whether the ideas are bold enough to meet the scale of the challenge.
As many of our allies start to respond to a shifting global order, this is where our thinking on China risks falling short: the UK doesn’t just need a clear China strategy, it needs a bigger vision for where it wants to fit in a world where other players, not just China, are changing too.
The good news is, there was a lot of welcome nuance in the refreshed Integrated Review, which updated the UK’s 2021 strategy on national security and international policy. Far more balanced on China than expected, there were a number of sensible tweaks: a distinction between China as a whole and the Chinese Communist Party, the first mention of the threat to Taiwan, and – in the Review Refresh’s only concrete China commitment – a doubling of funding for the UK’s China capabilities. Cleverly’s speech was even more welcome –
rejecting calls to declare a “new Cold War” and claiming that “a stable, prosperous and peaceful China is good for Britain and good for the world”.
In both, all of this was wrapped up in the UK’s own variation of the latest fashion in China strategies: a three-prong approach along the lines of ‘Protect, Align, Engage’ (see also: Biden’s initial ‘Competition, Confrontation, Cooperation’ and his new ‘Invest, Align, Compete’, or Labour’s ‘Challenge, Compete, Cooperate’).
The problem is that there wasn’t much to get excited about either. Cleverly’s speech may have been a welcome fleshing out of the government’s thinking, but it remained light on concrete policy steps. Even the doubling of funding for the UK’s China capacity, for example, is missing key strategic detail. More funds are of course welcome, but they have to be spent smartly.
Take the Great Britain China Centre, which facilitates dialogue between Chinese and British officials and runs educational programmes for UK policymakers. The centre was defunded by Liz Truss and quietly restored to just 70% of its original funding by Rishi Sunak this January.
But this is exactly the sort of place where the UK should be directing funds. There needs to be a frank conversation about the sheer difficulty of acquiring working proficiency in Mandarin and other Chinese languages. And, if anything, the remarkable progress of translation software should make us reconsider just how much money we want to be pouring into the low levels of language proficiency that come from short-term or part-time courses. The UK would arguably be better off targeting its language funding to a smaller pool of the most promising, committed linguists (and linguistic technology), and complement this by building up broader cultural and political understanding of China throughout our policy apparatus.
This idea of updating old approaches to new realities needs to run through the rest of the UK’s China policy – and beyond.
The Integrated Review, for example, is clear that the UK will align with its allies to influence the CCP’s actions but lacks essential detail on where exactly we envision ourselves sitting amongst them. Moreover, in his speech, Cleverly spoke glowingly of the US, EU and Britain as a bloc that can “stand together” on China, glossing over the very real differences in the China strategies of each.
Where Britain wants to position itself within this bloc is an urgent conversation that will mean recognising an uncomfortable truth: we think about China much more than China thinks about us.
There’s a new-found asymmetry to our relationship with China that many of our allies don’t have to navigate. The UK can’t take the approach of the US, which can afford bumper stimulus packages to encourage technological decoupling from China, but equally we won’t get the full extent of Beijing’s EU charm offensive as it seeks better access to the trading bloc.
Beijing, for its part, is well aware that the UK needs to figure out where it sits between the two. Ambassador Zheng Zeguang has taken a leaf out of China’s EU playbook, promising greater potential market access for investors and urging the UK to take advantage of China’s “high-level opening up”.
At the same time, he warns against the UK becoming a “dogs-body” of the US, while state media editorials claim that “the UK should recognise that its delusions of grandeur are letting Washington again lead it astray.”
UK policymakers, however, seem less occupied with finding the right geopolitical fit for the UK. In the long-term, this will only be to our detriment: any coherent China strategy needs to start with a cleareyed vision for the UK’s place in the world before it narrows in on China itself. And our best bet for that vision is one that recognises while we might not be a superpower, we can be a smart power that plays to our strengths on China and beyond.
The Integrated Review actually sets out these strengths compellingly. What it fails to do, however, is link them convincingly to our approach to China. The Review highlights the UK’s world-class development expertise – but not how we could adapt and update this to make a demand-driven development offer that counters China’s. It notes that the UK has seats on 14 out of 15 UN specialised agencies – but doesn’t link this to a strategy to counter or complement China’s increasingly sophisticated engagement with the UN and other multilateral bodies.
And the same is true in reverse. There is a reluctance to acknowledge where the UK’s global standing has weakened, limiting our ability to push back against the more harmful dimensions of Chinese influence.
The Review correctly identifies the need to deepen cooperation with a broad group of partners but not, for example, how we reconcile this with our lowest overseas aid budget in decades.
In other words, the UK isn’t responding to China in a vacuum. Both in the Integrated Review and beyond, this is the additional layer of geopolitical thinking missing from the UK’s approach to China. Without it, the UK will struggle to articulate the foundations of a coherent China strategy: where exactly do we see the values or priorities that the UK wants to protect against the threat from China? Where do we think there is room for improvement in the international order and what will we fight to protect? And what types of Chinese involvement in the UK itself are we willing to accept? Cleverly’s speech added some much-needed colour, but the UK still has much further to go.
Building greater domestic resilience is all well and good, but it needs to be specific. The Review promises the UK will “strengthen our national security protections in those areas where the actions of the CCP pose a threat”, without any detail on what constitutes a threat or how exactly the government plans to strengthen the UK’s protections.
There is low-hanging fruit here – the long-awaited semiconductor strategy, for example, is a first step to clarifying exactly how and where the UK is exposed. But without this broader thinking, we risk sleepwalking into an overly securitised relationship that shuts the door to pockets of opportunity and risks stoking discrimination against East Asian communities in the UK.
The same goes internationally, where the UK needs a proactive vision that makes strategic use of our strengths across education, defence, cybersecurity, AI and soft power. With this in place, the unique footing on which we can both compete and cooperate with China will become far clearer – as well as the areas where we risk wasting our efforts.
These are all tough questions, and it is to the government’s credit that they are beginning to try and address them. All this at a time when an approaching general election and the raging debate between Brussels, Paris and Washington – not least the fierce US response to Macron’s April Beijing trip – are hardly encouraging leaders to stick their heads above the parapet on China. But it is in the UK’s selfinterest to keep having these uncomfortable conversations. If, as the Integrated Review puts it, China is an “epoch-defining challenge”, then surely it deserves some epochdefining thinking.
About the Author
About the UKNCC
We help leaders make better decisions on China by providing Learning & Development programmes & Pathfinder Dialogues.
In an era witnessing a rise of misinformation, polarising politics and divisive media, the decisionmaking context on matters related to China is extremely complex. Since the end of the ‘Golden Era‘, the discourse on China in the U.K. has become dominated by hawks, apologists, and special interest groups pursuing narrow agendas. Recognising that there was a market failure in the U.K. in fostering a national China-facing capability, the UKNCC was established in 2020.
Today, UKNCC is Britain’s leading independent educational non-profit on China. As a community interest company (CIC), UKNCC is also Britain’s only China-focused organisation that is legally prohibited from lobbying under U.K. law.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in the UKNCC Guest Contributor Programme are of each author and do not
represent those of UKNCC as an organisation or of any individual associated with it.
Copyright © 2024 UK National Committee on China CIC (Company number 13040199) All Rights Reserved.
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