Britain would be foolish to ignore China’s overtures
Once it leaves the EU, Britain will be able to sign trade accords with the world’s largest and second-largest economies, the United States and China. The first is uncontroversial: America is our strongest ally and chief trading partner, and opposition to a deal is limited to those who fundamentally dislike capitalism. China, though, is in a different category.
Many British observers sympathise with one or another of its repressed communities – Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong devotees, Christians, democracy activists. Others have strategic concerns, pointing to China’s purchase of an African bloc vote in the United Nations, its spreading naval bases, its theft of intellectual property. Both groups, for different reasons, are wary about trade with the Asian giant.
Hence the muted coverage of the Chinese foreign minister’s offer of such a deal to Jeremy Hunt last week. Our commentators focused, trivially, on Mr Hunt’s slip of the tongue, in which, after a long conversation in Japanese, he referred to his Chinese wife as Japanese. In fact, the big news is that Beijing wants a close economic partnership with a post-EU Britain. China has only a limited number of bilateral trade deals, including with the EFTA countries. Its talks with the EU are going nowhere, and it correctly sees Britain as a natural partner in keeping sea lanes open and trade routes uncluttered.
We should respond warmly, if a touch guardedly. Over the past decade, China has become a champion of the international trading order. In a world where protectionism is on the rise – the WTO reports that trade restrictive measures are spreading while liberalising measures dwindle – a commercial partnership between the world’s second and fifth economies would bring global benefits.
Linking commerce to human rights is never sensible. Trade encourages pluralism and raises living standards for the majority; its withdrawal hurts the wrong people and bolsters autocrats. Yes, we should encourage the spread of civil freedoms, but economics is the wrong tool.
What of the strategic concerns? China often sees trade as a geopolitical instrument, a means to an end. What is its end here? Surely that is obvious enough. China aims to keep growing at six per cent a year. To do that, it needs maximum global economic liberalisation. It is worried by Donald Trump’s protectionism, and wants to detach Britain from that policy. Good: we should have nothing to do with Trump’s trade barriers.
In 1583, an earlier champion of Global Britain, Elizabeth I, sent a letter to the Chinese Emperor suggesting that trade would bring “the joy and benefit which consisteth in the transporting outward of such things whereof we have plenty, & in bringing in such things in which we stand need of ”. Sadly, her letter went astray in Goa. But, 435 years on, there is potentially vast joy and benefit in the transporting outward of our legal, financial and educational services, and the bringing in of cheaper consumer goods. We’d be fools to forego the opportunity.
The grapes hang huge and heavy in the heat, heralding an early harvest. 2018 looks like being best ever year for English wine. Our fizz is already world-beating, regularly coming top in blind tastings. At this year’s Sommelier Wine Awards, more medals went to English sparkling wines than to champagnes. Nor does our pinot noir go only into making bubbles: our reds, though they start from further behind, are becoming smoother and finer by the year.
There is every reason to expect the improvement to continue. As Michael Gove says, the rise in temperature is good news for English viticulture. France’s champagne houses know it, which is why they are buying up chalky acres in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire.
It is considered bad form to point out that climate change brings opportunities as well as costs – though, if you think about it, it could hardly be otherwise. More vines are growing in England than at any time since the dissolution of the monasteries, possibly ever. During these sunny days, try to find time to toast our national inventiveness with, as the poet almost said, a beaker full of the warm Home Counties. FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @DanielJHannan; at telegraph.co.uk/opinion