Britain's new Labour government may bring 'clarity' on China, but a major change of course is not expected

China has said it hopes it can get relations with Britain back on the "right track" after the Labour Party's landslide election victory, but most observers are not expecting a significant change in policy.

As prime minister, David Cameron hailed a "golden era" in relations between the two countries, but they have declined significantly since then and China has more recently been described as an "epoch-defining" security challenge for the UK.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government has promised to have a "full audit" of the country's relations with China within 100 days.

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Ruby Osman, a China specialist at the London-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change established by the former prime minister, said this might provide some "clarity" after "the incoherency of the different China strategies" followed in recent years.

New Foreign Secretary David Lammy said before the election that Labour's strategy towards China was to "compete, cooperate and challenge" with "progressive realism".

"Progressive realism is all about [getting] things done. To solve some of the global problems, it means going out and talking to people that you're not necessarily 100 per cent aligned on," Osman said.

"And I think on the Chinese side as well, there'll be a lot of appetite to engage with Labour. I think from Beijing's point of view, they're quite keen for this election to be a bit of a reset."

The Chinese foreign ministry responded to the result by saying: "We hope to work with the UK to move China-UK relations forward on the right track on the basis of mutual respect and win-win cooperation.

Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the ministry, added that a "a stable and mutually beneficial" relationship would help both sides "respond to global challenges together and promote world peace and development".

Shi Zhiqin, an international relations professor specialising in Europe studies at Tsinghua University, said the last Labour government and Cameron's administration had followed "a very friendly policy toward China" but now "the general direction of their bilateral ties is a continued deterioration".

He said "on major security issues ... [US and British] policies should be largely aligned", adding that both countries were suspicious about Chinese investments and Beijing's stance on the war in Ukraine.

Last year, the China-owned Dutch subsidiary Nexperia was forced to sell its chip plant - the biggest in the UK - to an American company on national security grounds.

David Cameron, pictured in an English pub with Xi Jinping during the "golden era" of relations between the two countries. Photo: EPA alt=David Cameron, pictured in an English pub with Xi Jinping during the "golden era" of relations between the two countries. Photo: EPA>

Sebastian Contin Trillo-Figueroa, a geopolitics analyst at the University of Hong Kong, said Britain's policy in the Indo-Pacific was likely to see the country maintaining its commitment to Aukus, the three-way security pact with the US and Australia set up to counter China's growing influence in the region.

He also expected "continued restrictions on Chinese vendors in the 5G market".

James Downes, an assistant professor in comparative politics and international relations at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University, said the country would maintain a "strategic ambiguity".

"A focus on tapping into the economic benefits with China will continue ... whilst continuing close ties with both the US and the EU," he said.

He added Labour was also likely to share the US and European Union's concerns about overcapacity, after Washington and Brussels imposed tariffs on new energy products such as electric vehicles, which they said were being overproduced to undercut the Western market.

However, he said the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House could complicate Britain's China policy. For example, he has threatened to impose 10 per cent universal tariffs on all US imports, including those from its European allies, which may drive them to boost economic cooperation with China.

Long Jing, deputy director of the Centre for European Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said Labour tended to follow a more pragmatic economic policy towards China compared with the Conservatives.

"The UK has always been a more utilitarian and mercantile international player ... It will strengthen cooperation [with China] in a more pragmatic aspect, considering the UK economy's downturn, stagnation or even regression after Brexit, and the huge reduction in China-UK trade," she said.

She added that new cooperation could be fostered in areas such as AI governance, digital economy and people-to-people exchanges.

Wang Yiwei, a Europe specialist at Renmin University, said business and non-governmental exchanges had increased between the two countries.

"[Britain] is in no doubt it wants to seek re-engagement with China ... we want to win [the UK's trust] as well," said Wang, who has taken part in some of these discussions.

But observers said the prospect of higher-level exchanges, including visits by the countries' leaders, were low because of issues such as Taiwan and human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, which China considers to be "core interests" where outsiders must not interfere.

"If Labour continues to advocate for Hong Kong's autonomy, or to voice challenges in enforcing compliance with the Sino-British Joint Declaration [on the handover], it could complicate the Chinese leadership's willingness to accept a visit," Trillo-Figueroa said.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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