China, UK can renew cooperation on multiple fronts
The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. But the year is also the 50th anniversary of another important date for the People’s Republic of China: taking up its seat at the United Nations in 1971. When Beijing’s first UN representative, Huang Hua, took his place as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, he joined Sir Colin Crowe, the British ambassador to the UN at the time.
Even today, China and the United Kingdom are among the very small number of countries that have the privilege of permanent membership of the top table of the UN. Yet 1971 was not the CPC’s first contact with the UN, or with British representatives there.
Revolutionary leader Dong Biwu was a founder member of the CPC in 1921. He took part in the Long March, and then made an even longer journey in the spring of 1945 — to San Francisco, where he served as the CPC’s representative in the Chinese delegation to the founding conference of the UN. When it comes to the current international order, both the UK and China were involved in its creation.
Today, the UK is redefining itself as a country with global ambitions. China, too, is seeking to play a more prominent role in the world community.
Are there areas where the two countries have interests in common, or which are complementary?
In fact, there are several such areas, and they relate to issues that go well beyond national boundaries. Education is one point of connection that brings the two countries together. Over the past five years, the number of Chinese students in British universities has risen by 34 percent. Today, there are about 120,000 Chinese students in British universities.
These numbers are, of course, useful financially for a sector that has been badly hit by the pandemic. But they have a greater long-term significance as well. The young Chinese who study in Britain could be tomorrow’s leaders in business, education and media. The UK has worldclass higher education and schools, and it is a point of pride that the country educates the best and brightest from around the world.
Chinese parents frequently speak of the UK as a highly desirable destination for their children to take a bachelor’s or master’s degree. British education is informed by the values that have made our universities great for nearly a millennium: always questioning, intrigued by the wider world, and based on the idea that thinking outside the box is central to our enterprise.
Britain can do more to exercise that curiosity about China: we need more students to study in China, not just the Chinese language, but also social change. The British government has announced a new scheme to send students around the world — China should be a top priority for that project.
Universities have also been at the heart of another area that brings these two countries together. To control the pandemic, only a small number of countries have had the science infrastructure to develop COVID-19 vaccines. Britain and China are two of those countries.
China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm have been key to the rollout of vaccines both for China’s huge population and in many other countries. Central to the global rollout is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, developed at Oxford University, one of the world’s great universities, a product of the vibrant and liberal academic atmosenergy phere that defines the UK.
Yet the concerns of universities can lead to great commercial possibilities too. Britain and China are also defined by entrepreneurial cultures that have been able to turn bright ideas into commercial successes. Today, Britain trades around the world, seeking new markets in the Asia-Pacific, while China has developed one of the most entrepreneurial societies in the world.
During the early reform era, former leader Deng Xiaoping’s reforms allowed Chinese businesses to xiahai — “jump into the sea” of commerce. Today we can see that scientific developments in areas such as vaccines allow the possibility of future cooperation — with science that goes beyond boundaries.
And there is one area where science must overcome boundaries, and Britain and China must cooperate with the wider world. In November this year, the UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Climate change is the most pressing challenge facing the human species. The UK has set ambitious targets for reducing its carbon emissions and made significant efforts to move to electric cars within just a few years. China will likely be the world’s biggest single market for electric cars, and aims to move toward renewable much more actively in the next five years and beyond.
But China and Britain cannot and should not confine their efforts to their own borders. Much of the Global South needs green growth, and it will not be easy to ensure that much of the planet’s population becomes more prosperous while curbing climate change. China has built up a wide range of relationships through the Belt and Road Initiative, which it can and should use to promote a greener agenda. The UK has long been a highly respected champion of sustainable development and must use its expertise to push forward this essential agenda.
In his farewell remarks to the UK in January 2021, after serving as China’s ambassador to the UK for 11 years, Liu Xiaoming said that “China and the UK differ in political system, development stage, history and culture” and pointed out that “it is natural that we do not always see eye to eye”. Yet, he said, “China and the UK, as major countries of global influence, shoulder the important mission of safeguarding world peace and development”.
The world expects a great deal from China and the UK not just in their bilateral relationship but also to deal with challenges that need to draw on the worlds of education, science and cooperative global governance. In 1945, or 1971, when Chinese and British diplomats and politicians met, few of them would have visualized the world order of today. But they would all have understood the importance of the two countries seeking a productive and lasting relationship.
The world expects a great deal from China and the UK not just in their bilateral relationship but also to deal with challenges that need to draw on the worlds of education, science and cooperative global governance.