More than trade: Britain brings its values, backed by military power, to China-UK relationship
Lord Mandelson says strengthening UK-China relations isn’t strictly mercantilist, but also based on the UK’s willingness to address global issues in accordance with its values
When President Xi Jinping (習近平) came to stay recently as the Queen’s guest in the UK, most would not have expected the visit to become the success it grew into. Suddenly, something became visible about the UK-China relationship and you wondered why it had taken so long to emerge.
Britain no longer has an empire; we do not run the world and we are not even Europe’s largest economy. So what has Britain got that the others haven’t?
READ MORE: Full coverage of Xi Jinping’s state visit to the UK
The UK has much financial expertise to offer, based on our mistakes as well as successes, from both the private and public sectors. We can do this while stepping up efforts to facilitate the initial public offerings that will be required to bring more private finance to China’s state-run enterprises.
We must also assist China further to reform its financial system, which is now more exposed to systemic risk than ever before, with recent progress on liberalisation at risk of stalling or going into reverse.
The first of these is more constrained than the second. The global financial crisis, and the ensuing recession and austerity, meant that up until now Britain had to blunt its military spending. We still devote 2 per cent of gross domestic product to maintaining our military capacity, something that other European members of Nato do not.