M Omar Iftikhar
THE extradition agreement between China and the United Kingdom has changed. British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has hinted at becoming tough with China. Recently the UK government decided to ban Huawei 5G from operating in the country. Moreover, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the UK was pursuing the actions as followed by Australia, the US, and Canada.
The UK also has an arms embargo with China since 1989. This could be extended to Hong Kong. The two countries, China and the UK are in a disagreement over several reasons. Including these are the rising tensions in the South China Sea and the Royal Navy planning to send HMS Queen Elizabeth, the aircraft carrier, to this region in 2021. Prime Minister Johnson did have reservations regarding China’s behaviour on human rights violations and the activities transpiring in Hong Kong.
PM Johnson said that “China is going to be a giant factor in our lives, in the lives of our children and our grandchildren.” In this regard, according to the British Prime Minister, a “calibrated response” must be adopted by the British. The diplomatic tension between China and the UK has been fluctuating for long. The UK must keep in mind that it is still reeling from the impacts of a Brexit. Any challenge it faces on the diplomatic front resulting in a skirmish in any form with China may not bode well for UK’s socio-economic health. Although the signs of a cold war between the two countries have been debunked, China thinks otherwise. Liu Xiaoming, Ambassador of China to the United Kingdom said that “The UK should have its own independent foreign policy, rather than dance to the tune of Americans, like what happened to Huawei.”
China is also facing a turbulent relationship with the US. The blustery economic ties between the two countries have forced Beijing and Washington to re-evaluate their ties. The China-US relationship was rocked once again when the US claimed that two Chinese hackers were trying to steal information from the websites of American companies working on virus research. As a drastic result, the US recently ordered to shut down China’s Houston consulate. Interestingly, the firms on Wall Street have been evaluating the repercussions of forming a more synergetic relationship between China and the US. While some view that the world will become polarized, others consider this alignment to have serious consequences on the world.
According to Jimmy Chang, chief investment strategist at Rockefeller Asset Management, “Given, the Covid-19 crisis, how China handled the early stages of it and now the imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong, it’s really difficult to see how the U.S. and the West and China can get back to normal. The decoupling will only gain momentum in the coming year, unless there are major policy shifts within China. At this point, it doesn’t look likely.”
Despite the US elections to be held in November 2020, China may continue to have a certain level of animosity with the US. Whoever takes charge of the Oval Office in January 2021, Beijing will remain cautious of how Washington will pursue diplomatic ties with China. The cold war between China and the US, however, is escalating with each passing day. Orville Schell, Director of the Centre on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York said, “I think we’re in a dangerous and precipitous spiral downward, not without cause, but without the proper diplomatic skills to arrest it. wall from specific and solvable challenges to a clash of systems and values.”
While the Covid-19 and anti-Chinese racism have been growing in the US, some other factors are leading to a rift in US-China relations. China’s attempt to control the South China Sea has been a growing concern by the Trump administration. Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State has said that China’s claim of the South China Sea is completely unlawful. Moreover, former US administrations did accuse China of stealing American technology. Moreover, the expulsion of journalists and other media workers was also carried out by the two countries. Following the Trump administration’s decision to limit Chinese journalists from working for Chinese news organizations, China ordered the expulsion of journalists working from various leading media outlets. China, therefore, must play its cards with the UK and the US while keeping the consequences of its actions in mind. In such a fluctuating geopolitical scenario, China needs to pave its diplomatic tussles with the west, especially with the US and the UK.
— The writer is a freelance columnist based in Karachi.
