From the very beginning of Xi Jinping’s visit, on London’s Horse Guards Parade, right through to the end, at Manchester City Football Club, neither the Chinese nor the UK governments pretended this was anything more than a commercial arrangement between two consenting nations.
In her speech at the Buckingham Palace banquet in Xi’s honour, the Queen noted that the two countries shared the distinction of being permanent members of the UN security council and therefore “have a responsibility to cooperate on these issues which have a direct bearing on the security and prosperity of all our peoples”.
In fact, what was striking about the week-long bilateral coupling was the absence of public discussion of the geopolitical crises of the day such as Syria or Ukraine or the South China Sea, where the impasse in the security council has left the international community powerless to respond.
That vacuum would be unthinkable if David Cameron had been meeting any other leader from the security council’s five permanent members. The gold in the promised “golden decade” is not a metaphor for anything. When it comes to the UK and China it just means cold hard cash.
Cameron’s former chief strategist Steve Hilton derided his former employer for “sucking up to China”. He declared the visit “one of the worst national humiliations since we went cap in hand to the IMF in the 70s”.
And after a passing cyclist, a lawyer called Paul Powlesland, got into an argument with Xi supporters about human rights, declaring that “many English people are frankly disgusted” with the government’s supine approach”, a video of the discussion went viral and was viewed more than half a million times, particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The public thirst for a debate on the issue was a reflection of its absence from official discussions during the Xi visit.
However, these were voices off, kept well away from the main stage. British diplomats have argued privately that there could be indirect strategic benefits of economic interdependence for the UK. Perhaps Britain could eventually exert greater leverage on China, and perhaps, somewhere down the line, it could help peel China away from its tight relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia on some global issues before the security council.
There was little in the course of the Xi visit to give credence to such hopes. From start to finish, China showed itself to be the dominant partner in the relationship. That was apparent in the opening moments, when Beijing displayed its mastery of mass mobilisation, filling the Mall with cheering supporters outfitted with flags and banners from the Chinese embassy, swamping out human rights protests that were meagre by comparison. The technique was repeated again and again at each event through the week.
In his reply to the one direct question he was obliged to face on human rights, from the BBC, Xi said China had “room for improvement”, but behind the scenes Chinese officials made clear that China had its own view of what human rights meant.
“Our goal is to pull 10 million people out of poverty every year, and we have to maintain social stability in order to do that,” a senior official said, adding that if it was necessary to block internet news sites to keep that stability intact, so be it. “That is the central part of our attempt to achieve human rights.”
When Xi officiated at the opening of a Confucius Institute conference in London to promote the teaching of the Mandarin language, the embassy changed the agenda to include the recitation of a poem the president had written in 1990. It was a paean of praise to a traditional Communist hero called Jiao Yulu, a party leader from Henan province celebrated on a million propaganda posters for putting the needs of the ordinary working people before his own. In style and substance, Xi showed himself to be an unreconstructed, old-school party boss.
If any leverage resulted from the deals done over the course of the week, it is more likely to be Beijing’s leverage on the UK, through investment in infrastructure and in particular the UK’s nuclear energy sector
Justin Harvey, the chief security officer for the US-based Fidelis Cybersecurity consultants, said there was shock in America about the nuclear deal. “You just don’t mess with nuclear power,” Harvey said. “In this relationship, China has nothing to lose but the UK has everything to lose.”
He said that if current tensions over China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea turned into open confrontation, the UK might find itself having to choose between its traditional US ally and a nation that holds significant stakes in its own infrastructure.
Harvey said: “You never know when today’s best friend is going to turn into tomorrow’s worst enemy.”
