Liam Fox: China coronavirus criticism and Britain’s Huawei 5G ban should not affect WTO bid

Liam Fox said previous comments on China’s ‘repression and denial’ of coronavirus information is also irrelevant to his bid to woo Beijing

Britain’s candidate to become the next World Trade Organisation (WTO) director general has survived the first cull, but urged realism over the US-China trade war

4-MIN READ4-MIN

Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox (left) met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the China International Import Expo in November 2018. Photo: Twitter

Published: 2:04pm, 18 Sep 2020Updated: 8:53am, 22 Sep 2020

Liam Fox, the British candidate to lead the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said his vigorous criticism of China’s trade policy and its handling of the coronavirus pandemic should not be a disqualifying factor for his candidacy in the eyes of Beijing.

In a hotly-politicised race for the director general hot seat vacated by Roberto Azevedo at the end of last month, candidates have been careful not to appear too close to China, the European Union, or the United States, for fear of alienating any superpower members.

Fox, the former British trade minister, has survived the first cull of candidates, during which the field was cut from eight to five, set to be announced by the WTO later on Friday.

Mexican candidate Jesus Seade confirmed by text message on Friday that he had been eliminated, verifying earlier reports by POLITICO and Bloomberg that he along with Egypt’s Hamid Mamdouh and Moldova’s Tudor Ulianovschi had not secured enough support among members to move to the next stage.

We need to remember what the WTO is and what the WTO is not. The WTO is about getting trade to move more freely

Liam Fox

Fox came to the race from a tricky political position, having championed Britain’s exit from the European Union and fostered close ties with the Trump administration.

But his strong rebuke of China’s government – as well as the British government’s decision to phase out Huawei from its 5G network – has “nothing to do with the agenda”, and should therefore be kept on separate tracks, he told the South China Morning Post.

“That has got nothing to do with the agenda I’ve set up for the WTO. This is exactly what I mean by trying to keep the trade agenda separate. It’s not entirely possible to keep it in a sterile environment, but as much as you can,” Fox said.

“We need to remember what the WTO is and what the WTO is not. The WTO is about getting trade to move more freely. It’s about dispute resolution inside the system and continuing liberalisation through negotiation. That is what the WTO does, it is not the [United Nations] Security Council, it is not the UN, it’s not the World Bank, it’s not [the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development].”