A new survey finds that a growing number of Britons see China’s rise as a threat to the UK and oppose economic ties with Beijing.
Sino-British relations have deteriorated over the past year amid the New Crown (Chinese Communist Party virus) outbreak, problems in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and huawei‘s 5G restrictions.
The survey, released Tuesday by the British Foreign Policy Group, found that 41 percent of respondents view China as a serious threat (critical threat), up from 30 percent last year.
The survey also found that only 22 percent support any kind of economic agreement between the British government and China, while 15 percent do not want to see any level of agreement and only 13 percent support China’s involvement in Britain’s infrastructure development.
On human rights issues, 40% support a British challenge on China’s human rights record. Beijing’s political repression of Hong Kong and the so-called “re-Education camps” in Xinjiang have been strongly condemned by the international community.
The report reads, “The dramatic shift in Britain’s relationship with China over the past 18 months is partly due to growing awareness of security vulnerabilities, but also to growing alarm at China’s domestic human rights record, and its behavior as a global player.”
Only 21 percent of respondents said they believe China acts responsibly globally, the lowest rate among the United States (43 percent), Canada (89 percent), Japan (59 percent), the European Union (60 percent) and India (40 percent).
End of the Golden Age
The release of these surveys comes as the UK is setting its post-Brexit policy priorities. In democracies, public opinion sentiment trickles down to the political sphere and ultimately influences national decisions, meaning the UK may take a more hawkish stance toward China based on public opinion.
The report writes, “In just a few years since the dawn of what was seen as a new ‘golden age,’ this hard-line political approach to China has been matched by a shift in public opinion toward hostility toward China.”
Britain was one of the first Western countries to recognize China, but the two countries are only really considered to have entered their first honeymoon period after the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong, when they issued a joint declaration establishing a comprehensive Sino-British partnership in 1998, and the relationship has grown ever closer since.
After Xi Jinping‘s visit to the UK in 2015, the two sides cooperated on the “Belt and Road” project and the relationship was defined by both sides as the start of a “golden decade”, but only five years later, the relationship began to take a sharp turn for the worse.
China’s international reputation took a hit in 2020 when Beijing is credited with covering up the new coronavirus pandemic in its early days. The above survey shows that China experienced a further deterioration in public opinion during the peak of the first wave of the Epidemic.
During the epidemic last August, Liu Xiaoming, the Communist Party’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, said at an online conference that the responsibility for the difficulties in Sino-British relations lay entirely with the British side, which has recently undergone major changes and serious deviations in its Perception and orientation toward China, and that “China has not changed, what has changed is Britain.”
Analysis suggests that bilateral relations may further deteriorate as China becomes more aggressive on human rights and Hong Kong issues, causing the UK to adjust its attitude toward China.
In addition to the epidemic, Hong Kong has become an object of growing concern for Britain. Most Britons criticize Beijing’s erosion of democracy in Hong Kong and support granting Hong Kong people the right of abode in Britain.
In addition, the deterioration of U.S.-China relations also negatively affects Sino-British relations. Under the appeal of U.S. President Joe Biden, Britain is expected to keep moving closer to the Western democratic alliance to deal with the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party.
At a meeting of the seven major industrialized nations, or G7, on Friday, Prime Minister Johnson of Britain, the host of the meeting, plans to start working on a joint strategy to deal with China, the report said.
Dalibor Rohac, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, told Voice of America, “Given its recently acquired autonomy, Britain could play an important role in bridging European and U.S. perspectives by demonstrating how a fundamentally open global economy would respond to the authoritarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party.”
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