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Britain
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Rana Mitter
Rana Mitter

Asian Angle | Britain thinks China is the new USSR or Japan. It needs to rethink

  • China is neither. The truth is it is both a rival and a partner to the West
  • Could Britons one day gossip about China’s governors, share videos on Youku and monitor trends in Chongqing – while also speaking up on Hong Kong?

Reading Time:3 minutes
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Chinese President Xi Jinping with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 2015. Photo: AP
Rana Mitter
The British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG), a London-based non-partisan think tank, this week released a report titled “Beyond the Golden Age: Resetting China-UK Engagement”.
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I co-authored it with BFPG director Sophia Gaston after we both became worried that Britain had moved from complacency about China to a state of paranoia without any intervening period of reflection about the relationship’s significance.

The report does not recommend policies but suggests a new mindset for engaging with China based on knowledge rather than assumptions. Britain has had to deal with the unexpectedly rapid rise of China at a time when the West is on the back foot politically and economically.
As a result, much of the criticism of China in Britain relies on China being cast as either the new USSR – among those focused on a perceived military threat – or as a new Japan among those who identify an economic opportunity.
The reality is more complex: China is both a rival and a partner to the West, and that situation has no useful geopolitical parallel. Nor is there a precedent for a state that creates enormous economic freedoms while clamping down on political ones so fiercely.

Being forced to think outside existing political categories is an important exercise in understanding why China is the biggest geopolitical challenge to the West since 1945.

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Instead, recent British policy toward China has often been reactive and inconsistent. We argue for a proactive policy that is confident, friendly and frank. To achieve that aim, we suggest Britain needs to move past political framing that conceals more than it reveals.

That process should start by defining our fundamental values. One formulation often repeated in London policy circles is that Britain should work with “like-minded” states.

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