David Lammy’s trip to China this week is a defining moment in the short history of this government. Since 2022, the UK has had just one leader or foreign minister visit the country – James Cleverly last year. This compares with eight for the US, six for France, four for Germany, three for Japan and two for Canada.
That’s indicative of what the government believes is a failure of diplomacy. Under Rishi Sunak, Labour argues, Britain’s policy towards China became erratic and inconsistent. Moments of engagement such as Cleverly’s visit were juxtaposed with increasingly hawkish rhetoric (Sunak regularly labelled China a “threat”).
But while the Conservatives were charged with needlessly alienating China, Labour stands accused of appeasing it. The Foreign Office asked for a visit to the UK by the former Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen to be postponed ahead of Lammy’s trip.
When Sunak led on China at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Keir Starmer replied that the UK would seek to “cooperate” on issues such as net zero, “compete” where it has different interests, and “challenge” on human rights. These are the “three Cs” that Labour says defines its approach.
If those sound familiar, it’s because they are. Biden administration officials have used the same “three Cs” motif to describe their strategy: compete, cooperate and confront (though note the latter has a more hawkish resonance). The US secretary of state Antony Blinken, who is close to Lammy, once described America’s approach as “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be”.
The alignment between the US and the UK is no coincidence (Rachel Reeves’ “securonomics” has a similarly Atlantic backstory). In opposition, Labour studied the Biden administration’s approach and consulted architects of the policy such as Rush Doshi, who was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on the US National Security Council from 2021 until this year.
Lammy has told cabinet colleagues that there is no contradiction in him being the “biggest Atlanticist” in government while also visiting China. The US itself has pursued this approach in the post-Covid era to manage competition. “This is not anything like what Cameron was doing as PM,” a Labour source said of the ill-fated promise of a “golden era” of UK-China relations: “It’s closer to what Biden has been doing as president.”
Yet it’s worth noting where the US and UK diverge as well as converge. Earlier this year, Biden imposed 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, while EU member states have backed tariffs of up to 45 per cent. The UK, however, has no intention of pursuing this course (Reeves, notably, is due to visit China next year). Ministers point out that the British market differs from others in that 80 per cent of the cars made here are exported.
But at a time when the UK has sought to “reset” relations with the US and Europe, this makes it an outlier. Whether the government’s quest for economic growth draws it permanently closer to China is a tension to watch.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
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