Commenting on how realistic the remarks made by the UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, to his China counterpart, Wang Yi that there should be no iron curtain between the two countries, Professor Brown said there are a lot of areas where the UK largely agrees with China such as on climate change and AI. With a new government there may be new possibilities:
“This Labour government, their priority is really to do something about the British economy, productivity remains low, growth has been very very poorly in recent years and that’s really a problem why the second biggest economy in the world, which China is, isn’t a bigger kind of player in Britian… But still there’s probably other spaces that we could cooperate so it makes complete sense that Lammy’s first visit as Foreign Secretary – one of his first was to Europe, then to America and now to China because they’re our priorities, those three places.”
While the relationship between the UK and China is widely seen as important, it has been bumpy. Speaking about whether Lammy’s visit could help to reset the relationship, Professor Brown spoke of the UK’s long history with China with both good and bumpy periods, particularly in the last ten years. He said while a re-set was not the right term, the tone of the relationship needed to be improved:
“Today he [David Lammy] made a statement which to me seemed very balanced. It was a recognition of the importance of preserving a decent relationship, decent dialogue with China. I think these are all very sensible things at the moment when there’s so much uncertainty in the world. And Britain to be honest has lots of problems, lots of issues in other geopolitical partners, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Middle East you’ve just covered. These are big big problems. I think a stable relationship with China is helpful.”