Last Friday, British Foreign Minister David Cameron met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. According to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Saturday, Wang said at the meeting that the two sides should strengthen strategic communication and play a bigger role in promoting security and maintaining peace. According to Wang, Beijing and London should work together to “converge interests” and properly resolve mutual differences and contradictions to get relations back on track. According to British sources, both ministers agreed on the need for continued cooperation in areas such as trade, culture, and people-to-people relations, as well as addressing climate change.
During the meeting, Cameron called on Beijing to use its influence with Iran to pressure Yemen’s Houthis on the offensive in the Red Sea. Tehran-backed rebels, who control much of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, have been attacking commercial vessels in the area since November, saying their actions are in response to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the support some countries have given to the Israeli government.
The United States and Britain have repeatedly responded to the attacks with the use of force, but they have still not managed to stop them completely. Cameron also presented the British position on the state of human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and in Hong Kong and opened the case of British MPs on whom China imposed sanctions. He also called again for the release of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is indicted for violating the controversial national security law.
According to Reuters, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision last year to appoint former Prime Minister Cameron as the head of British diplomacy raised concerns among some lawmakers of the ruling Conservative Party about what it would mean for relations with Beijing. In 2015, Cameron announced a “golden era” in relations with China, which, according to Sunak, has ended. According to Reuters, Sunak is instead trying to balance national security interests with better cooperation in the field of trade or climate change. However, in December of last year, Cameron admitted that cooperation with China should be continued wherever it is in the British interest.
Strategic communication requires that economic cooperation more or less affect the political area. The dilemma of British policy will be whether to change the approach to China, which is permanently burdened, among others, by the different human rights views as well as the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
The current positions so far show that fundamental differences between Britain and China will persist on this issue, but there are also different approaches within British politics.
