THE UK WILL TODAY start to try to rebuild its relationship with China, following years of backing US-led hostility and political interference.
New British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Brazil today.
“We are both global players, global powers, both permanent members of the security council and of the G20,” Starmer told the press. “China’s economy is obviously the second biggest in the world. It’s one of our biggest trading partners and therefore I will be having serious, pragmatic discussions with the president when I meet him.”
TROUBLEMAKERS
The last meeting between the countries’ leaders was Theresa May’s visit to China in 2018.
However, later that year, Hong Kong obeyed a G-7 legal recommendation to table an extradition amendment. The US then used it as a “flashpoint” to launch a hybrid warfare disinformation operation. It funded street protests using activist groups long-financed by the National Endowment for Democracy, a regime-change unit, and other specialist interference operators.
The efforts of these US political interference units were backed by UK’s 77th Brigade psychological operations group in the creation of an entirely false narrative.
But the US-UK operation failed in its aim, which was to cause the PLA to step in.
MORE FAILURES
So the US and UK instead dubbed Beijing’s passing of a relatively mild anti-collusion “national security” law for Hong Kong in June 2020 as an outrage that would cause the populace to flee.
Again the ploy failed. The populace pointedly did not flee.
Early the following year, 2021, the UK went live with a British passport scheme, designed, as law professor Grenville Cross said, “to harm Hong Kong”.
But again it failed. Fully 97 per cent of eligible Hong Kong people ignored it, preferring to stay in the city. But this did not prevent the creative western mainstream media presenting the three per cent who did sign up for the scheme as a massive exodus “fleeing oppression”.
(Since then, a significant proportion of the three per cent have returned to Hong Kong.)
JUST POLITE
Xi Jinping will be polite at the meeting with Starmer, as is his wont. But the Chinese leader knows that he has all the cards.
First, China remains in growth mode in multiple areas, while Britain is struggling financially with huge problems, particularly in productivity, in the transition to clean energy, and in other areas.
Second, the Chinese will not forget Britain’s very active role in America’s political interference games. The west has lost any moral high ground it had with China.
And third, China sees the British as a very small nation (not even one per cent of humanity) with its once outsize influence in steady decline. The downward direction is not going to reverse.
The world is in transition, and both Starmer and Xi know it.
Yet the UK will continue to try to patch things up. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is expected to visit China in the New Year.
[published in fridayeveryday .com]
by Nury Vittachi
Lai See(利是)
** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **
In the latest international upheaval, Europe is taking the hardest hit. After 300 years of modern civilization and the churn of imperial powers, that era is gone, and a better tomorrow is nowhere in sight.
Europe has one problem: it cannot take care of itself. “No one really knows whether Europe would still be able to produce toothpaste if it weren’t for China,” the EU Chamber of Commerce said.
Europe doesn’t make toothpaste; it sells luxury brands. Fine — look at the latest news. Reuters reports that the U.S.-Israel-Iran war has delivered a blow to European luxury labels. Sales at Dubai’s upscale malls, packed with wealthy shoppers, have fallen 50 percent, and LVMH, France’s largest luxury group, says wealthy Middle Eastern customers have paused spending in Europe because of the conflict in the Gulf region.
The New York Times, in a piece headlined “Europe Is Done With Appeasing Trump”, lays out several of Europe’s current pains.
“The barrage of tariffs that opened the second Trump administration, aimed indiscriminately at friend and foe; the brazen demands that Denmark cede Greenland to the United States, and now the absence of any consultation with European allies before joining Israel in an attack on Iran that has affected the entire world, have erased any illusion among most Europeans that Mr. Trump is anything but an unpredictable, vindictive and uncontrollable danger,” it wrote.
Trump’s latest move is to impose a blockade on all Iranian ports from Monday, adding another barrier in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. president has repeatedly said, with obvious satisfaction, that America has oil and natural gas, and that oil shipping blockage cannot bring the United States to its knees. In other words, if Iran wants a war of attrition, the White House is ready to go all the way. America’s NATO allies, meanwhile, make clear they will “decline to join in.” Europe’s oil supply is already under pressure: Russian oil and gas are cut off, and Middle Eastern shipping now faces a second lock. So is Trump punishing Iran, or Europe?
“Last year, export controls imposed by Beijing on seven rare earth elements and the magnets made from them had especially severe consequences. China is a global leader in the production of these critical raw materials, which are widely used in electric motors, smartphones, and numerous everyday electronic devices,” Deutsche Welle reported. “The EU Chamber of Commerce said nearly one-third of its member companies indicated in a questionnaire survey at the beginning of this year that their business had been affected by China’s export control measures.”
The EU Chamber of Commerce knows perfectly well that China-EU relations have been pulled off course by the United States, and that Europe has not shaped its foreign and trade policy around its own interests. It has even had to tear out 5G networks built by Huawei and ZTE, while Chinese electric vehicles face restrictions. That has only made China-EU ties more tangled. Europe can hardly be called arrogant now. Energy supplies are unstable, and rare earth constraints have turned it into an industrial power with nothing usable to work with. So what now?
Although calls to “de-risk” economic ties with China have persisted for years, many European companies continue to bet on the Chinese market. Over the past year, EU figures show that 26% of companies said they were relocating their supply chains to China, “a proportion twice that of companies choosing to move their supply chains out of China or establish a second hub overseas.” The trend is clearly still going strong.
Europe’s major powers, including France, Italy and Germany, all feel the need to break free from the manipulation and humiliation imposed by the United States, especially the Trump team. Europe has finally woken up and is now pushing for independence and autonomy, placing its national destiny firmly in its own hands.
Nothing in the world is difficult if you are willing to scale the heights. Europe becoming strong again is no dream, but starting over takes patience. I would say 300 years is enough for you to turn things around.
