As superpowers clash, Britain is caught in the middle

From Hong Kong to Huawei and the Russia report, Boris Johnson is charting a difficult path between the world’s most powerful nations this week, writes Kim Sengupta

The PM knows that a key factor in seeking to avoid a confrontation with Beijing is the need for post-Brexit trade deals with economic powers (Getty)

The suspension of the extradition treaty with Hong Kong by the British government was the latest sign of a frayed relationship between London and Beijing and brought predictable threats of retaliation from China.

The scrapping of the deal was to be expected after the Chinese government imposed draconian security laws on Hong Kong and follows similar moves by Canada and Australia, with the US due to follow imminently.

But the UK measures, announced by Dominic Raab on Monday, markedly failed to impose sanctions on any Chinese officials over Hong Kong or other instances of rights violation by Beijing such as on the Uighur Muslim community in Xinjiang, as the US has done.

The move on Hong Kong extradition began what is going to be a busy few days for Boris Johnson’s government, with the visit of the American secretary of state Mike Pompeo for talks on China and the ongoing negotiations on a US-UK trade treaty, and the publication of the long-delayed and highly contentious report into alleged Russian interference in British politics on Tuesday.

The report, by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), is expected, among other issues, to examine claims of Russian influence over Brexit and the Scottish referendum, donations to the Conservative Party by Russians and the prime minister’s own contact with wealthy Russians.

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer who wrote the controversial dossier on Donald Trump, has claimed in testimony to the ISC that the governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson had ignored allegations about Trump’s supposed Kremlin links, and also that Mr Trump may have secretly funded Brexit.

The US president has decried clams that Vladimir Putin played a part in putting him in the White House as fake news. The US administration has, however, condemned Chinese interference in the domestic politics of other countries while it has itself liaised with British politicians, mainly from the Tory right, on a number of issues including Brexit.

Mr Pompeo is due to meet a group of 20 cross-party MPs who want a more aggressive stance towards China, before his scheduled talks with the prime minister and Mr Raab around the same time as the ISC report comes out. The US secretary of state will, according to diplomatic sources, stress the need for a strong united front against Beijing.

Announcing the decision on the extradition treaty, the foreign secretary repeatedly underlined the importance of maintaining relations with China. He said: “The UK wants a positive relationship with China. China has undergone an extraordinary transformation in recent decades. Grounded in one of the world’s ancient cultures, not only is China the world’s second largest economy, it has a huge base in tech and science. We want to work with China. There is enormous scope for positive, constructive, engagement. There are wide-ranging opportunities, from increasing trade, to cooperation in tackling climate change.”

China was also exempted from sanctions in the much-heralded unilateral sanctions regime, the so-called British Magnitsky Laws, which targeted officials from Russia, Saudi and Myanmar, as well as the personnel from two North Korean regime security departments.

The foreign secretary has insisted that it would take a long time to build a case against Chinese officials suspected of malpractice. But the US moved swiftly to impose sanctions on Chinese individuals and businesses after Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, following similar punitive measures on Huawei.

Mr Raab, a former human rights lawyer, has strongly condemned China on human rights abuses in Hong Kong as well as on the Uighurs. He described reports of forced sterilisation and concentration camps in Xinjiang as “ gross and egregious ... reminiscent of something not seen for a long time”.

China’s ambassador to the UK, the voluble Liu Xiaoming, has accused the UK of “dancing to the tune of the Americans”. It is true that the UK used the US sanctions on Huawei to carry out a volte face on letting the Chinese multinational into the country’s 5G network, announcing that it will be phased out by 2027.

But the British government had little choice in the face of unrelenting American pressure. The situation would not change if Mr Trump lost the presidential election in November, with a succession of senior Democrat politicians, such as House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, making it clear that a Biden presidency would remain implacably opposed to Huawei’s involvement in UK infrastructure.

Britain has offered around three million Hong Kong residents the chance to settle in this country with a path to permanent citizenship. But there are doubts among diplomats that there is appetite in London for robust sanctions against the Chinese government.

Boris Johnson showed no great enthusiasm for tough action while speaking on China on Monday, stressing: “I’m not going to be pushed into a position of becoming a knee-jerk Sinophobe on every issue, somebody who is automatically anti-China,” and pointing out that “China is a giant factor of geopolitics, it’s going to be a giant factor in our lives and in the lives of our children and grandchildren”.

A key factor in seeking to avoid a confrontation with Beijing is the need for post-Brexit trade deals with economic powers. Mr Pompeo will also discuss the projected trade deal taking place between the US and UK while he is in London.

There have been contradictory accounts of the negotiations. Mr Johnson caused an outcry earlier this month when he appeared to back away from a pledge that American chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef will not be allowed into the country as part of the deal. Farmers drove tractors to Parliament Square in protest and international trade secretary Liz Truss hastily sought to reassure that food safety standards would not be weakened.

Robert Lighthizer, the chief US negotiator, maintained recently that in many cases the issue of food safety is “nothing more than thinly veiled protectionism”. Woody Johnson, the US ambassador to the UK, has called some of the claims about American produce such as chlorinated chicken “inflammatory and misleading”.

Out of the European Union, Global Britain will have to chart a careful path in the confrontation between two superpowers.