Britain can no longer treat China as optional

If there is one statement that can be said with any confidence about the UK’s relations with China, it is that the British do not invest much time in this link.

Those studying the Chinese language at UK universities are at historic lows. Most members of parliament are more preoccupied with domestic issues and, most recently, the turbulence caused by Trump 2.0, rather than anything happening far to the East. 

Tellingly, there was no prime ministerial visit from the UK to Beijing from 2017 until January this year, when Keir Starmer finally went. It should be noted that in that time, there were five different British leaders. The last time there was a state visit from China to London was in 2015. 

This relative indifference is not new. But the challenge in 2026 is that China is becoming more important, both for the UK and the world that it tries to operate in, as a significant middle power. China, with Hong Kong, is now the UK’s third largest trading partner. It is the second largest single research partner, after the US, in terms of peer reviewed research articles. Over 100,000 Chinese students still come to the UK to study, and their fees have grown even more important as a lifeline where most other sources of funding are under stress. 

On climate change, artificial intelligence and, ironically, globalisation, London is now aligning with Beijing more so than with Washington. Indifference and sporadic attention is no longer a rational response. 

We cannot pretend that the UK and China have ever been easy partners. Their relationship is at least four centuries old, marked by much contention yet plenty of collaboration. Their cultural impact on each other is surprisingly deep. The British still drink tea, originally sourced in China, and their gardens are still influenced by ideas brought from China 200 years ago. 

Even so, there is little deep trust between the two countries. In the British media, there are daily claims of Chinese cyberespionage and attempts to influence the political system. Whatever is the underlying truth, these indicate a general and often unspoken sense of uneasiness by the British that China is not a place they understand, or can be relaxed about. 

That is the political reality that any British leader has to consider when managing this important bilateral relationship. It is one dominated by assumptions, emotions and sporadic outbursts of interest, followed by a reversion to the general inattentiveness noted above. The Covid-19 pandemic was one of the few eras when China came to the forefront of most people’s minds in the UK. But that was hardly a positive period. 

The other, even more transformed reality for the ruling Labour government under Starmer, is that the US, rather than China, is the greatest source of instability. Since the end of the Second World War, Britain and America have been close allies. Nonetheless, there have been the occasional blips. America did not support Britain’s claims over the Suez Canal in the 1950s. Britain did not send troops to fight in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Margaret Thatcher was furious when US President Ronald Reagan unilaterally invaded Grenada, a Commonwealth state, in 1983. But despite this, the links reverted almost immediately to their underlying closeness.  

Trump 2.0’s almost systemic instability, where the only predictable feature of his administration is its unpredictability, has created deep fissures and a rising sense of panic. While the UK has not contested the US’s right to take action against Iran, it has sought to distance itself from a course of action that it clearly regards as ill thought out — and risky. 

On 14 April, the International Monetary Fund indicated why this reluctance was well placed — the Iran war is likely to take the most severe toll on a British economy already afflicted by anaemic growth and poor productivity than any other major player. 

In this critical situation, it is better for everyone to have a clearer idea of who they are and where they have come from. Historically, British foreign policy has tended to be pragmatic. Despite the rhetoric about values and principles, in practice, the UK has been clear about needing to work with partners it does not necessarily agree with or share foundational world views with. China typifies this. 

The UK was the first significant Western European country to recognise the new communist regime in Beijing in 1950. That was in order to preserve its interests in Hong Kong, which the UK was still running as a crown colony. 

Unlike the US, the UK had representation in China throughout the Cold War. And with the retrocession of Hong Kong to China in 1997, on the whole, London was guided by self-interest, eventually agreeing to a deal that preserved economic and business interests, even if it left questions of political structures and processes largely unresolved. 

Starmer’s January visit embodies this pragmatism. Deliberately low key, it did see some practical breakthroughs. The UK was finally given visa-free access to China, putting it largely on a par with members of most other European nations. Several British members of parliament were removed from a list of sanctioned individuals. Meanwhile, there were modest announcements about investment and technical cooperation. 

What there wasn’t — and will never likely to be — was the announcement of a far bigger, bolder strategic alliance, which might in any shape or form impact the UK’s relations with the US and Europe. 

For all the differences alluded to above between Washington and London, it is impossible to see how the UK might want or be able to extricate itself from the sheer depth and breadth of transatlantic relations. 

The US remains overwhelmingly the largest investor, trader and intellectual partner for the UK. The US is also a key part of the British nuclear deterrence programme. Despite all of US President Donald Trump’s unfriendly and inaccurate claims, British and American troops have often fought side by side in the last half a century. It is hard to see that ever being the case with China. 

With all of these clearly understood parameters, the most likely pathway going forward is that the UK will have to stick with a pragmatic, well thought out, strategic approach to China. 

The UK needs to accept China’s emergence as a technology superpower and its role as a core partner in global issues of concern to the UK. It needs to shift away from the almost perpetual binary “hot-cold” pattern that has been the case in the last decades. From the Golden Era in 2015 when Xi Jinping was in the UK, to labelling China as the “enemy” (by the UK deputy national security adviser) in 2023, these are indicative of complacency, inattentiveness and incoherence. 

The UK needs to accept that China is not a straightforward ally, nor an outright enemy, but something in between. After all, as Mao Zedong had said, “Nowhere in this world does there exist love or hate without reason.” And with both the US and China, we have learned that having mixed feelings is not a crime. Indeed, it is the only sensible approach.

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