Prior to leaving for China on what is only the second such trip by a top UK minister in six years, Mr Lammy said that “engagement with China is pragmatic and necessary to support UK and global interests…we must speak often and candidly across both areas of contention as well as areas for cooperation in the UK’s national interest”.

Mr Lammy’s visit began with meetings with Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang (the most senior of China’s vice premiers) and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on Friday, 18 October.  

In his meeting with Mr Lammy, the vice premier referred to the recent phone call between President Xi and Prime Minister Starmer, during which they reached an important consensus on strengthening cooperation and exchanges across various fields, providing clear direction for the development of bilateral relations. Mr Ding said: “China is willing to work with the UK, with a strategic and long-term perspective, to build a stable and mutually beneficial relationship. By upgrading practical cooperation across all sectors, both countries and their peoples will benefit, and greater momentum will be injected into global peace and prosperity.”

In his meeting with Mr Lammy, Chinese Foreign Minister Mr Wang said that “China-Britain relations… now stand at a new starting point” and stressed that competition among major powers should not be the backdrop of this era.

The Foreign Secretary mentioned scope for “mutually beneficial cooperation” in areas such as climate, energy, science, trade and tech, while cautioning that Britain would “always put its national interests and national security first”.

On Saturday 19 October, Tom Simpson, Managing Director, China, CBBC, co-chaired a business roundtable in Shanghai with the Foreign Secretary.

The roundtable provided an opportunity for Mr Lammy to hear the views of British businesses from across a diverse range of sectors, including finance, healthcare, consumer, automotive, education, and energy.

During the roundtable, Mr Lammy highlighted the new government’s approach to establishing stable and consistent engagement with China. Lammy also reflected on the role British business will play in supporting the UK government’s economic growth mission and net zero ambitions.

On behalf of CBBC and our members, Tom Simpson provided insights into the challenges and opportunities facing British business in China, while highlighting the importance of attracting Chinese investment to the UK.

“As I said in my comments to the Foreign Secretary, his visit to China is a real boost for the morale of the British business community,” Simpson commented. “We are encouraged by the new government’s approach and the prospect of sensible and hopefully sustained engagement with China. British business needs the backing of our government more than ever to ensure our companies can continue to succeed in China, and channel the economic benefits back to the UK”.

Following the roundtable with British business, the Foreign Secretary met with Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng before attending a reception at the Museum of Art Pudong organised by the British Council and the Shanghai British Consulate. The reception was attended by around 200 representatives from business, education, arts and culture. 

Commenting on Mr Lammy’s China visit, CBBC Chief Executive Peter Burnett emphasised that the organisation is, “very encouraged by the Foreign Secretary’s visit to China. This is the first senior visit from the new government and sends a positive signal about the vital importance of our bilateral relationship”. 

“CBBC believes that such visits are key in underpinning strong economic engagement which not only supports our member companies with business in China but will also contribute to the government’s growth agenda”.

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The visit of David Cameron and Xi Jinping to the Plough Inn at Cadsden, Buckinghamshire in 2015 has come to be seen as the defining moment of the ‘Golden Era’ of UK-China relations. The scene suggests a sense of normality; two men arrive in a pub, and one of them – ostensibly the local – orders them both a drink. They wear dark suits, and their ties are both off as if they are colleagues having just finished work. They sit side-by-side at the bar, exchanging observations about (you imagine) the world at large. 

However, things are not quite as normal as they seem. For a start, there are actually three men, one of whom is an interpreter, because the men don’t speak the same language. One of them – the non-local – slightly rushes his pint, not waiting for it to settle. The body language is awkward, almost forced.   

However, what is really abnormal about this exercise is not the setting, but the fact that these men are the leaders of Britain and China. This outing therefore represents the closest interaction by people in their position in more than 400 years. In fact, it is only the third state visit by a Chinese leader ever, the first one having taken place in 1999.   

The sheer abnormality of Britain and China actually talking to each other is beautifully brought out in ‘The Great Reversal’, the new book by Professor Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute.  Professor Brown has turned his attention to this relationship now because he feels that the UK lacks a national narrative about its relationship with China. This assertion is amply illustrated throughout his highly readable book, in which monumental involvements in each country’s history unfold with barely any interest or acknowledgment by the British public.   

I was primarily intrigued by what this book might reveal about the history of dialogue between the two countries. Wilton Park is a dialogue-focused organisation, and we have our own history of dialogue with China, as well as ambitious plans for the future. However, as a nation, we find ourselves at what feels like a low point in our exchanges with China. Protests in Hong Kong, Brexit, Covid-19, and the changing cast of UK Prime Ministers, have all contributed to major channels of interaction falling away. Bilateral economic and financial dialogues, people to people dialogues, high level strategic dialogues, and a host of schemes to promote joint development and prosperity have almost all lapsed. What Professor Brown’s book tells us is that this is not a historic nadir, but more like a reversion to the mean.  

There are three primary take-aways from this book when it comes to UK-China dialogue. The first is that trade has always led the way. Queen Elizabeth I, facing a squeeze on trade routes in Europe due to competition with Spain, initially dispatched missions eastwards in the 1650s, bearing letters for the Chinese Emperor (unfortunately none was delivered, despite four attempts). The motivation for opening contact between the two nations was explicitly commercial, seeking trade ‘which consisteth in the transporting outward of such things where of we have plenty, and in bringing in such things as we stand in need of’.   

This original ‘growth mission’ was to inform countless subsequent embassies, delegations and incursions into Chinese territory. Despite the infamous failure of the McCartney embassy in 1793, the East India Company and ambitious independent traders such as Jardine and Matheson gradually assumed a controlling position over China’s trade, and therefore its engagement with the world. This led initially to the addiction of the British to Chinese tea, before featuring some of the least edifying episodes of mercantilism in British history, when exports of opium to China eventually gave rise to two hopelessly one-sided conflicts (or ‘Opium Wars’) in the nineteenth century.   

Only after literally hundreds of years did this trade-based contact broaden into anything diplomatic or cultural (although military and missionary adventures feature in the middle pages of the book). The Chinese initially declined a diplomatic presence in the UK, before settling in Portland Place in 1877. Only after the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the invasion of the Japanese, the conclusion of the Second World War and a civil war between Chinese Nationalists and Communists, did national leaders come close to actually talking to each other. Ambassadorial-level relations were initiated in 1972, and the leader of the opposition Edward Heath met Mao Zedong in Beijing two years later; Queen Elizabeth became the first British sovereign to visit China in 1986 (shortly before Wham!).   

Now, as then, the rationale for Britain and China’s interaction is primarily economic, even if it contains many additional components. As Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy make plans for visits and dialogues as part of their own growth mission, we can expect commercial relations to be uppermost in their minds. 

The second lesson is that diplomacy is hard. There are numerous tragicomic examples in the book of British consuls and diplomats trying and failing to make a connection with their opposite numbers. In one passage, Brown describes how, of the consular officials who learned the fiendishly-difficult Chinese language and travelled to engage late-Qing China from 1855, 11 had died, nine had returned home on sick leave, while several remained at their posts in a precarious state of health; of the 90 arrivals between 1897 and 1920, five committed suicide and many suffered a nervous breakdown or serious physical ailment. Those diplomats that did manage to keep body and soul together had to endure the resentment and aloofness of their Chinese counterparts, and constant accusations from the British trading community that they were accommodating the Chinese. It is therefore not a surprise that a China-focused career in the diplomatic service is not high among the ambitions of British undergraduates (judging by the tiny numbers of those studying Mandarin). 

The third lesson is that relations between the two countries have always been asymmetric. In fact, the historical period during which Britain and China could legitimately see eye-to-eye was vanishingly brief. Brown identifies the 1997 Hong Kong handover as the point at which the balance of power changed, or perhaps the true turning point was China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001; either way, the tables turned frighteningly quickly. The UK and China had economies of equal size in 2005, but by the time Cameron and Xi visited the Plough Inn, the Chinese was already two-and-a-half times larger.   

What really struck me about this story is the contrast between the perennial failure of UK-China dialogue and the normality of British contact with other major powers. British leaders have exchanged state visits to certain European capitals for the best part of a thousand years. Many European royal families are not only familiar, they are actually family, having intermarried regularly through the centuries. In recent history, the British have fought and died alongside American and Commonwealth (and particularly ‘Five Eyes’) partners, bonding our people closely. Shared language, culture, and philosophy continues to sustain interactions with our closest European, Atlantic and Antipodean partners – meanwhile, there has never been a British Prime Minister or monarch who spoke Chinese (former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd is the closest we have had). 

This barren history of dialogue puts Cameron and Xi’s visit to the pub in a very different light. He was, as Professor Brown’s book shows, far more ambitious than any of his predecessors (or indeed successors). If Britain is to grow a tradition of ‘normal’ dialogue with the Chinese, it will, therefore, have to be almost from scratch. We will have to be patient, wrestle with the language, work within economic realities, and risk being driven ever-so-slightly mad. But in a world which is changing so quickly, establishing a sense of normality would be both an advantage and a significant accomplishment. 

This article was first published by Wilton Park

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Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine presents China with its biggest foreign policy crisis in 20 years. In a similar way to when NATO forces accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Yugoslav Wars of the late 1990s, the incursion puts the foundation of China’s foreign policy under considerable strain. The circumstances under which intervening in another country’s domestic affairs is justifiable is consistently one of the most contested topics in international affairs.

Not for the People’s Republic of China (PRC), though, which has long been resolute that whatever the world’s worries, they are not China’s concern – it falls to those directly involved to remedy the situation. But as was the case in 1999, so it is today, and Beijing finds itself caught between NATO, an ideologically aligned state on Europe’s border, and a US-led world order watching in horror as events unfold. What is different this time is that the PRC is a major player in global governance, and it has stated that its relationship with the antagonist “knows no limits.” 

This policy update considers how China views the war in Ukraine and how it could affect international politics and economy.

Background 

On 21st February, Vladimir Putin kicked off the conflict by recognising the independence of two Ukrainian territories. Then, on 24th February, he ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine, starting a war. Since then there has been a massive barrage of sanctions against Russia – first to deter and then to penalise the Kremlin for its act of aggression. The UK, the US, the European Union, Canada, and Japan, among a host of other countries, have all applied financial sanctions, export controls on things like semiconductors, and some import bans. The UK, the US, Canada and the EU have also all stated that they will no longer buy, or would begin to phase out, Russian oil and gas. Countries have even started raising their import tariffs on goods coming from Russia. But, as it stands, none of that has been enough to stop the war. What’s more, the world is looking to understand China’s stance on the conflict to gauge whether it will offer Russia an economic and financial lifeline.

China’s actions to date 

The PRC finds itself under an intense spotlight because, out of the other major economies to have refrained from condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine, it is the only one to have described its relationship with Moscow as “rock solid.” India, for example, has also decided that keeping the Kremlin sweet is in its interests – Russia is a significant arms supplier to India, which has a tricky relationship with China along their Himalayan border. There are indications that Beijing would like to cast that light a little wider. India’s abstention at the UN General Assembly vote denouncing Russian aggression towards its neighbour two weeks ago reportedly did not gone unnoticed, leading Chinese scholars to retort that with the 40 countries that abstained or backed Russia during the vote accounting for most of the world’s population, not everyone is watching events unfolding in Ukraine in horror. A new world order based on majority rule has been among China’s aspirations in global governance for a while now, and there are numerous reasons why Beijing might appreciate how much influence it has in the conflict. This leverage is not without risk, though. 

China’s position on Russia and how it plans to use its influence is unclear; known knowns and known unknowns abound. Dealing with the latter first, it is unlikely we will ever know whether Putin informed his host at a meeting on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics last month that he planned to start a war three weeks later, for example. Similarly, the classified intelligence referenced by US officials ahead of last week’s Rome dialogues, stating that Russia requested support in the form of military equipment from China, will remain classified, however plausible. That, of course, gives rise to significant uncertainty, and businesses are not immune in that regard – analysts’ conjecture on the subject of a new “anti-dollar axis” could come into fruition, wreaking havoc on the global economy. That is unlikely though, at least for now.

Turning our attention to what is known:

• 25 February: Chinese President, Xi Jinping called Russian President, Vladimir Putin, urging
  “negotiations” over Ukraine
• 1 March: Wang Yi called Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and said that “China was ready
  to play a role in a ceasefire”
• 2 March: China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) stated that the PRC will not
  join in sanctioning Russia on the basis that the sanctions have no legal grounds
• 3 March: China abstained from a vote at the UN General Assembly denouncing Russian military
  action in Ukraine
• 7 March: Wang Yi told a press conference at the sidelines of the Two Sessions that his country’s
  relationship with Russia was “rock solid.” Wang also stated that China’s Red Cross will provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine
• 9 March: Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian issued a statement accusing NATO of
  pushing Russia-Ukraine tensions “to a breaking point”
• 10 March: Russia’s aviation authority stated that China is refusing to supply Russian airlines with
  aircraft parts
• 11 March: The Chinese Embassy in London issued a statement accusing the US of spreading
  misinformation over Russia requesting military assistance from the PRC.
  Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told a press conference at the Two Sessions that “it is important
  to support Russia and Ukraine ceasefire talks.”
  China’s representative to the UN-backed Russia’s concerns over US biological weapons in
  Ukraine.
• 14 March: Yang Jiechi, a ranking Chinese diplomat, met with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
  in Rome stating that both sides should adhere to the UN Charter and “address their
  legitimate concerns”
• 15 March: Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, stated that the PRC would retaliate if secondary
  sanctions were placed upon it “as China is not party to the crisis”
• 19 March: President Joe Biden called President Xi Jinping. President Biden confirmed the US would
  retaliate if the PRC supplied lethal aid to Russia. President Xi said that China wants to see
  peace in Ukraine but that “it takes two hands to clap”
• 23 March: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin says that China supports Russia
  remaining a member of the G20.
  The US announces that it considers Chinese companies profiting from business opportunities
  in Russia brought about by sanctions to be a ‘red line.’

Where does China fit in? Despite all the conjecture and China’s warming ties with Russia, it still has a functional and stable relationship with the US and Europe, albeit one that is deteriorating. Moreover, unlike Russia, there is no significant economic and diplomatic de-coupling taking place. This means that while the war in Ukraine may cause a recession in Europe and put downward pressure on global growth, it won’t trigger a fundamental breakdown in the global economy –Russia just isn’t a big enough player. 

That does not mean that it’ll be business as usual between the West and China. Economic and diplomatic ties do not constitute a load-bearing relationship. Given that the PRC has come out as strategically aligned with Russia by opposing sanctions, refusing to censure the invasion at the UN General Assembly, and aligning its state media and censors to maintain a stridently pro-Russia editorial line, it is likely that the West’s relations with China will become frostier.

And relations could deteriorate further – and quickly – should China’s approach of being diplomatically neutral but informally pro-Russia start to grate on Western policymakers who have the perception that China is what’s stopping the Kremlin from capitulating. 

Where does the UK-China relationship fit in? 

The big question is whether China will provide Russia with military hardware, as has been suggested by US intelligence. US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, has already stated that Washington would not just stand by were that to happen, and one can assume that they would impose sanctions. Under those circumstances, it’s possible the UK would do so, too. Not only has the sanctions team within the Treasury tripled in size since Christmas, but the government can now also automatically sanction anyone who has been sanctioned by the US or the EU, following the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill receiving Royal Assent on last Wednesday. That said, at present, the PRC does not look like it is going to give cause for further Western sanctions concerning the situation in Ukraine; the Chinese government has enough things to worry about at home. 

Supply chains; inflation; and miscellaneous business costs, such as energy bills, could become a problem for exporting UK companies, and all of these are a result of Russia’s activities in Ukraine. For example, companies that are already struggling with the cost of incorporating China in their supply chains will be squeezed further, as Russia has closed its airspace to aeroplanes registered in countries that have placed sanctions on it, and across Russia is the most cost-effective route to fly to China. 

Finally, Putin’s decision to occupy a sovereign state and break international law (despite assurances from Europe and the US that economic retaliation would be swift and severe) has led analysts to speculate how Beijing is assessing the damage of the sanctions with respect to its plans regarding Taiwan.  

Conclusion

China’s statements over the last few weeks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggests that their relationship does have a limit. Expect the PRC’s position of non-interference to continue to come under pressure over the coming weeks – from both the Russian government as it continues to face setbacks in Ukraine, and those governments sanctioning the Kremlin that see Chinese support as the lifeline preventing its capitulation – but not to crack. How China responds to Western pressure will impact multinational companies. There is a genuine chance that in the face of united global economic action against Russia, Beijing will move to become more cooperative with the West and conclude that the cost of ‘Wolf Warriorism’ is too much to bear.

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A global contest is brewing. China, the US, and the EU are all vying for influence along routes that Beijing first turned its attention to in 2013 when President Xi announced his Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that would bring the ancient Silk Road into the present day. It hasn’t always been this way. In the years preceding the outbreak of Covid-19, cooperation was the name of the game when it came to the BRI. In 2019, while attending the BRI Forum in Beijing, Britain’s then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond, came close to signing a Memorandum of Understanding that would have given Beijing Britain’s backing. Fast forward to the present day, and the US is spearheading the creation of the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative within the G7, while the EU has unveiled plans to launch a “Global Gateway” scheme.

So how does Britain fit in? And why is a country that once called the BRI “an extraordinarily ambitious vision” now debating whether it would be better throwing its lot in with Brussels and Washington?

Background

The BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road (OBOR), is one of the main load-bearing pillars of the Xi administration’s foreign policy. A diverse portfolio of overseas investment and construction projects rolled into a new, China-led model for interactions between countries, combined with a channel through which to transfer Chinese overcapacity, the BRI certainly is, as Phillip Hammond once noted, “a project of truly epic ambition.”

Stretching from China into Europe and traversing the continents of Central Asia, Africa, and the Arctic, China uses the investments its state-owned banks and companies makes along the route of the BRI to deepen its access and influence on the world stage, particularly in the Global South. Chinese banks and corporations have made over $2 trillion in foreign direct investments since 2005. The Trump administration worked hard to brand these investments as part of a “predatory lending programme” or a “debt trap,” but this claim has been widely refuted.

The prevailing view among scholars studying the BRI and how it fits into China’s new globalism is that there is no such “debt trap,” nor is China doing anything untoward to exploit the countries once its firms have invested. Research shows that China has never actually seized an asset from any country owing funds and that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans. As such, the prevailing motivation behind the West’s increasing desire to provide an alternative is to halt the spread of the ‘China option.’

If that is the case, then the clock is ticking, and China has a clear first-mover advantage. Chinese companies have become more professional in their dealings overseas. Meanwhile, the governments of the countries within which Chinese entities focus their investments seem to find the alternative financial and legal institutions that are being set up in parallel to the Bretton Woods system, to handle BRI disputes, to be very appealing. Distinguishable by their informality, ad hoc design, and preference for soft law over systematic formal rules, whether China plans to align its terms and conditions with international (read: Americanised) best practices remains unclear.

What are the Western alternatives to the BRI?

It might be too little too late to halt China’s emergence in the Global South. It could be that there is just too much Chinese capital flowing through these emergent economies already, rendering the West’s efforts to dissuade BRI countries from subscribing to China’s offer of an “Asian model” of economic development a futile endeavour.

That said, the US-led, G7 B3W initiative plans to narrow the “$40 trillion in infrastructure investment that developing countries will need by 2035”; $2 trillion has already been committed by the US, with other G7 members currently considering their contributions. Compared to the infrastructure focus of the BRI, the B3W initiative targets areas such as climate health, digital technology, gender equity, and health security, and is heavily private sector-led.

Brussels, meanwhile, has announced the Global Gateway (GG), a spending plan that will see $300 billion directed at countering China’s economic influence, predominantly across the African continent. Like B3W, GG is private sector-led and the text of the initiative specifies that it is about “rule of law, human rights, and international values.”

Where does the UK fit in?

The UK is a member of the G7, so presumably will transition its tacit support for the BRI to the US-led initiative, B3W. Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss has already indicated that she plans to align her department with the initiative’s objectives. What this means for UK-China relations depends on how closely the Johnson cabinet seeks to align its departments with their counterparts in the Biden administration. Were the UK government to pursue a policy of exclusive alignment with B3W, that could create complications with China because the Department for International Trade and the National Development & Reform Commission still have a Memorandum of Understanding in place from the 2019 Economic & Financial Dialogue focussed on third market cooperation (Read: BRI).

While the British government has kept its cards close to its chest concerning B3W – which remains scant on detail – and has not revealed its formal intentions vis-à-vis aligning with America’s vision, the UK and China reportedly plan to hold an economic and financial dialogue (EFD) in 2022, which could put pressure on the Johnson government to choose sides. Given that the UK and China have successfully delivered on almost all the outcomes agreed at the previous meeting, it is hard to see a palatable diplomatic exit ramp – for want of a better expression – for DIT to use should it want to extricate itself from further UK-China collaboration along the BRI. Ms. Truss has been far more hawkish towards China, however, so it will be up to the Prime Minister to bring the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office into alignment with DIT on further cooperation with China along the route. DIT, rather than the FCDO, currently coordinates the bulk of UK cooperation with China relating to the BRI.

The CBBC View

The BRI could become awkward for Britain as it tries to juggle asserting itself as a prominent, global trading nation and being a determined defender of multilateralism and the rules-based order. British firms have done well through partnering with Chinese state-owned enterprises along the route, particularly in the built environment and financial and professional services sectors – as a result, the British and Chinese governments have managed to tick off all the policy outcomes relating to the BRI from the last EFD. The BRI differs substantially from the US and Europe’s new offerings; it does not share their values-based approach for a start. Underlying the initiative is the idea that China is just as capable as the US in global leadership and governance – could cooperation along the route become the next area where the UK comes under pressure from the US and China to choose a side?

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The four publications approach our bilateral ties from different angles and together offer an overview of the choices and trade-offs that will determine the UK’s future approach:

• ‘Towards a UK strategy and policies for relations with China’ by Charles Parton, a former diplomat and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), in collaboration with the Policy Institute at King’s College, London. The report argues that the UK urgently needs to develop a new China strategy.
• ‘After the Golden Age: Resetting UK-China Engagement’ by Sophia Gaston of the British Foreign Policy Group and Rana Mitter of the Oxford University China Centre. They argue for a better understanding of China’s complex development and foreign policy and call for a more pragmatic UK approach.
• ‘China and the United Kingdom: Economic Relationships’ by Bill Allen and his colleagues at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) highlights the importance of China for the UK economy. Allen and his co-authors argue that ignoring China or even cutting our trade relations would entail serious economic trade-offs.
• ‘UK jobs dependent on links to China’ by Cambridge Econometrics (CE) takes an in-depth look at the positive role played by China-related trade, investment, tourism and educational programmes in creating and safeguarding British jobs. The report, which was commissioned by CBBC, finds that nearly 150,000 jobs in the UK rely on UK-China bilateral trade and other Chinese expenditure in this country.

Security and zero-sum thinking

Education and understanding

Economy and business

CBBC View

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The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, by Dexter Roberts

St. Martin’s Press, March 2020

Roberts’ fascinating book paints the picture of a deeply imbalanced society, which is sometimes overlooked by foreign investors attracted by the huge appeal of half a billion middle-class consumers.

Through this detailed report, journalist Dexter Roberts shows how foreign investors often chose to ignore ordinary workers. Far from buying organic food, fast cars and fancy apartments, the lower social classes constitute around 60% of the population and earn an average of between £2 and £10 per day.

In ‘The Myth of Chinese Capitalism,’ Roberts vents their grievances. He follows the lives and hopes of workers and small entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken regions of Guizhou, and in the manufacturing heart of Guangdong Province: Dongguan.

China’s local administrative system (known as the hukou system) prohibits many workers from relocating freely within the country, and hinders social mobility, perpetuating inequality and raising workers’ dissatisfaction. Without social mobility, Roberts argues, the economic growth of the whole country is at risk.

This well-researched volume brings to life the problems migrant workers face in China today. Roberts lucidly highlights a conflict-ridden system that poses a severe challenge to the country’s forthcoming growth.

Tech Titans of China, by Rebecca A. Fannin,

Nicholas Brealey Publishing, September 2019

China’s strong entrepreneurial culture has been key to the country’s technological development in the past two decades. Its competitive spirit and inexhaustible work ethic have transformed it from a land that used to play catch-up with the US, to a country that is leapfrogging the West. In ‘Tech Titans of China,’ pioneering journalist Rebecca Fanning provides the reasons why, as one of her sources tells her, “China is going to eat Silicon Valley’s lunch.”

Fanning focuses on key players and companies in sectors extending from the sharing economy and e-commerce, to AI and social media platforms. She spent several months interviewing China’s top tech gurus – the equivalent of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. The book is the result of a well-conducted exploration of China’s tech ecosystem, where the author waded through tech incubators, accelerators, workshops and networking events. Fanning’s argument is that China’s disruption of the US’s leadership role in tech should prompt companies and businessmen in the US to counter it, and fast.

A must-read to understand China’s technological advancement, the book provides fundamental context on how its tech sector reached supremacy, without forgetting to cast an eye on what comes next.

In ‘Tech Titans of China,’ pioneering journalist Rebecca Fanning provides the reasons why, as one of her sources tells her, “China is going to eat Silicon Valley’s lunch.”

High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia, by Will Doig

Columbia Global Reports, May 2018

Travelling through China only a decade ago required ingenuity and patience, but in little more than a decade, China has built an extensive network of incredibly comfortable and convenient high-speed trains. According to Doig, Beijing’s infrastructure ambitions have helped it overcome its frontiers. And following the push of economic agreements of the Belt and Road Initiative, those ambitions continue to grow with projects such as the Pan-Asia Railway from Kunming, in China’s southwest, which spans across Singapore, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia.

Just as countries around the world welcomed the Belt and Road Initiative with caution, Southeast Asian countries are facing a dilemma. Their leaders “both yearn for and fear” Chinese investments. The choice is between allowing “the heavy hand of China” in – through Chinese investments – or defending their sovereignty.

Most of the evidence Doig provides is anecdotal – stories from interviews and experiences on his travels to the countries affected by China’s Belt and Road ambitions. These include the border town of Boten in Laos, which resembles an Asian Las Vegas; the revived Bandar Malaysia project, which is a contentious property development in Kuala Lumpur; and Singapore’s Forest City, a group of islands aimed at Chinese expat buyers. A quick, interesting read to get a deeper grasp of China’s “railroad diplomacy.”

China, Trade and Power: Why The West’s Economic Engagement Has Failed, by Stewart Paterson

London Publishing Partnership, October 2018

In his book ‘China, Trade and Power, Why the West’s Economic Engagement has Failed,’ Stewart Paterson argues that Western countries need to further put pressure on China to open up and engage in authentic political reforms rather than the “indulgent engagement attitude” that liberal economies have displayed so far when it comes to China.

Paterson considers China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation as the key turning point. By granting access to the WTO, he argues, the West hoped to trigger a political change in China. Not only did that not occur, but unfettered access to global markets also enabled China to gain a further advantage whilst playing by the rules of the liberal market.

Paterson sometimes overstates his case but it can’t be denied that China’s growth following access to the WTO has rapidly influenced the political economy in the West and rewritten the geopolitics not just of China but of the world.

The Third Revolution by Elizabeth C. Economy

Oxford University Press, May 3, 2018

If Paterson identifies China’s accession to the WTO as a defining moment, Elizabeth Economy treats the ascent to power of Xi Jinping as the key to interpreting China’s modern history.

The author details the transformative impact of Xi Jinping’s policy in China and abroad. She describes the ambitious and expansive moves President Xi is adopting overseas and the decisive approach he is implementing within the country’s borders. Underlining these traits of Xi Jinping’s policy, Economy provides an informative explanation of what she calls the “Third Revolution”.

China’s current strategy is reversing the trend towards an economic opening and an acquiescent foreign policy that had been put in motion by Deng Xiaoping’s “Second Revolution” 30 years ago.

The book spots the tensions, successes and shortcomings of President Xi’s first five years in office, and provides suggestions to Western countries on how to navigate their relationship with China in the years to come.

Economy’s study of change in the field of international policy adds a fresh insight and nuance to the encompassing narrative of China’s political transformation. Essential reading to understand where China is going in terms of domestic and international policy.

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