UK’s prime minister Rishi Sunak talks tough when it comes to China. But the rhetorical brandishing of British democratic values vs Chinese authoritarianism, is hypocritical, argues Jane Hayward. 

In a widely publicised speech at the end of November, Rishi Sunak declared the end of the “golden era” in UK-China relations, a reference harking back to David Cameron’s beer-in-a-pub moment with Xi Jinping in 2015, but an empty claim by Sunak since nobody anywhere thought we were still in that era. Sunak is right, however, that Britain must find a path which eschews a misleading yet overused Cold War-like rhetoric (which wrongly implies that China is, like the old Soviet Union, firmly outside the global capitalist system) as well as naïve and self-serving beliefs about how economic engagement will induce political reform in China to make it, supposedly, more like Western liberal democracies. Doing so has to start with recognising that our politics resemble China’s more than we might like to admit.

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Sunak named China a “systemic challenge” which requires “robust pragmatism”. The speech has been lightly mocked for its vacuity and lack of specifics, but to be fair to Sunak, he did promise to fill in the blanks later, when the updated Integrated Review comes out early next year. We should not be surprised if a new Prime Minister might take a while to figure out a renewed and meaningful stance towards China. Sunak faces the difficulty of navigating between hawkish backbenchers and business interests keen to encourage Chinese investment, as well as a lack of clarity about China’s own path forward.

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