Johnson calls for broader UK ties with China

Britain must establish a relationship with China that goes beyond trade and commercial ties, Boris Johnson, UK Foreign Secretary, said in his first major foreign policy speech on Friday.

“As regards China and East Asia, our approach in that region must go beyond the quest for exports or commercial contracts,” he told the Royal Institute of International Affairsat Chatham House in London.

Johnson, who backed the successful campaign for Britain’s exit from the European Union, took office in July following the referendum vote.

He said what he called “Global Britain” should not confine its outlook to its immediate European neighbours at a time when new powers were rising. “It is right that we should make a distinctive approach to policy-making as regards China and East Asia,” he said.

Post-Brexit, British ministers have raised the prospect of eventual free trade deals with countries outside Europe, specifically China.

Johnson’s latest comments follow the election of Donald Trump as US president after a campaign in which he castigated China for destroying American jobs and threatened to impose punative tariffs on its exports.

The UK minister noted that the UK was one of the first countries to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a Chinese initiative capitalized largely by China. The British decision was criticized by the Obama administration.

Johnson said Britain was not just a link between Europe and the US. “We have our own distinctive identity and contribution,” he said.

Underlining what Britain had to offer the rest of the world, he noted that Cambridge University alone had produced twice the Nobel Prize winners than every university in Russia and China combined.

Johnson said it would be unrealistic not to accept that the international order needed to change. That was why the UK supported enlarging the permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, which currently includes both Britian and China, to other global powers, including India.