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The UK government’s approach to China lacks clarity and coherence, and “confusion” abounds across Whitehall about Britain’s policy tilt to the Indo-Pacific, according to a report by MPs.
The cross-party House of Commons foreign affairs committee published its verdict on Wednesday on issues overseen by UK foreign secretary James Cleverly as he went to Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Cleverly is the highest-ranking British official to visit China since before the Covid pandemic.
Ahead of the trip Cleverly hit back at Conservative party critics who want the UK to take a more robust position on China, insisting in an interview with the Financial Times that failure to engage with Beijing would be a sign of British “weakness”.
Cleverly was urged by the foreign affairs committee to publish an unclassified version of the UK government’s China strategy to ensure it is understood across Whitehall and to “flesh out” the policy so academics and business people are aware of the “limits within which they can operate with and in China”.
The committee’s report also called on the government to set out sector-specific guidance for industries of critical national importance, highlighting concerns about the “increased aggression” of the Chinese Communist party towards the UK and the “threat” it poses to British interests.
Alicia Kearns, Tory chair of the committee, said: “The confidential, elusive China strategy is buried deep in Whitehall, kept hidden even from senior ministers across government. How can those implementing policy — and making laws — do so without an understanding of the overall strategy?”
The report questioned the coherence of the government’s approach to China, citing a foreign policy expert who said ministers had “not articulated a coherent China strategy” and a UK business representative who raised concerns over a “lack of consistent and coherent policy on China”.
Cleverly rejected the charge of a lack of clarity in Britain’s approach to Beijing, citing a speech he made in April that focused on the issue, and an update to the government’s foreign and defence policy published in March.
The UK government had been “comprehensive and clear cut” about its “protect, align, engage” strategy on China, added the foreign secretary.
The MPs on the committee also accused the government of failing to explain its broader “tilt” towards the Indo-Pacific region, a shift first announced in the government’s so-called integrated review of foreign and defence policy in 2021.
The review did not even define the term “Indo-Pacific”, which is “contested and has various definitions”, said the report.
While the MPs concluded the government was right to recognise the “economic centre of gravity is moving eastward”, they cautioned that an increased emphasis on the Indo-Pacific “should not be at the expense of regions like the Middle East to which the UK has longstanding commitments and responsibilities”.
Ministers now had to explain what their fresh emphasis on the Indo-Pacific meant for government expenditure, including a reallocation of the Foreign Office’s budget towards the region and an increase in the number of UK diplomats posted there, said the report.
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