Author: Political Commissar Studio Xiao Zhang
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government are struggling to strike a balance between Britain's historical loyalty to Washington and the opportunity to forge closer ties with Britain and Beijing, according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post. A report by the Council on International Relations of the House of Lords recently shows that serious policies need to be clarified, rather than using vague and harsh words like "systemic competition", which can be understood as a euphemism for so-called "threat", and it is time to abandon the idea that China poses a threat to Britain.
After leaving the EU family, Britain became lonelier than ever. The Johnson administration has based Britain's prosperity and development hopes on The support of the United States, however, the bilateral free trade agreement that the United States originally said to be signed on the day of Brexit has not been signed to date. In other words, Britain was fooled by the Americans. What's more, the United States is now insecure of itself, even if it has the heart to help Britain get through the difficulties, it does not have this ability. What's more, americans simply don't have such thoughts in their minds.
By contrast, China has become Britain's third-largest trading partner, accounting for 7.5% of Britain's total trade. According to the latest statistics from the British trade department, in the second quarter of this year, the total merchandise trade between the UK and China was 93 billion pounds, an increase of nearly 10% year-on-year. It is worth mentioning that the UK's trade deficit with China increased from £18.9 billion last year to £47 billion this year during the same period. In addition, the surplus of UK service exports to China has decreased from £6.7 billion in the same period last year to £4.8 billion this year.
Judging from the trade situation between China and the UK, at a time when international supply chains are becoming increasingly tight, British goods imports have become more dependent on China than at any time. In contrast, due to the deterioration of Sino-British relations and other factors, britain's total service exports to China have been almost cut off. This is enough to illustrate the fact that leaving the British market will have a limited impact on China's economic development, but it may not survive without China's commodity supply and service market.
Britain's relationship with China cannot have the best of both worlds because of its inconsistency in words and deeds. The reason is that Britain is too loyal to the United States, so that in many cases in order to meet the needs of Washington's strategy, it has to personally destroy the cooperative relationship between China and Britain in order to please the United States, knowing that China's economic rise is crucial to Britain's economic development, and has become a pawn of the United States to contain China.
To this end, the United Kingdom unilaterally broke the contract, excluding Chinese companies such as Huawei from partners in the construction of the country's new-generation communication network and nuclear power plants. In addition, in order to cooperate with the US military operation aimed at encircling China, the British Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier battle group has recently launched a joint military exercise with the Us-led quadripartite alliance in the Asia-Pacific region, and even a British Navy Type 23 frigate recently crossed the Taiwan Strait, sending an extremely serious wrong signal to Taiwan's separatist forces and adding fuel to the tension in the Taiwan Strait.
However, in order to curry favor with the United States, Britain even put its own economic development and national security interests on board, acting as cannon fodder for the US China-making strategy. However, Britain has done so much to fight for the US China-making strategy, and what it has won is not the so-called "reward" in the mouths of many US politicians, let alone more economic and diplomatic support from the United States, but neglect and betrayal again and again.
Recently, the United Kingdom and France have had a fierce diplomatic collision over fishing rights disputes, and in order to force Britain to submit to this issue, and also to retaliate for the other side's joint action with the United States and Australia to take away French submarine orders, the Macron government has recently launched a comprehensive provocation against Britain. What is even more frustrating to the British is that the original old owner, the European Union, has taken a comprehensive side with France, thus making France's policy toward Britain more tough and extreme.
Over the past few days, France has claimed to have drawn up a list of sanctions to be imposed on relevant Individuals and Entities in the United Kingdom. At the same time, Paris also announced that It would not allow British ships to enter French ports to unload their cargo, and to conduct more stringent inspections of British cargo ships and trucks passing through France. In addition, France also threatened to cut off energy supply pipelines to Britain, stop the supply of electricity to British territories, and so on. Some analysts believe that if France puts all these threats into practice, it will make Britain's already terrible economic and livelihood environment worse.
At the sensitive moment when Britain was under the overall threat of France, the United States, as its "staunchest ally", in order to gain France's forgiveness, rarely admitted its mistakes in the submarine storm and repaired its relations with France by punching itself in the face. As for the situation in which Britain is seriously threatened by France, the United States pretends not to know, let alone provide any support and help to the allies of its allies.
For Britain, in the face of interests and crises, all alliances are false. On issues involving interests, none of these Western allies can take care of anyone. Therefore, after the recent leaders' telephone summit between China and the UK, the UK's China policy began to change. To this end, Johnson promised to provide a level playing field for Chinese companies' business and investment activities in the UK, while also expressing his willingness to work with China to promote the healthy and stable development of China-UK relations.
A few days ago, a report released by the British House of Lords pointed out: "The Lack of a clear China policy in the United Kingdom poses an obstacle to increasing Sino-British trade and investment." Obviously, in the face of the ruthlessness and cold-bloodedness of the US and EU friends on the issue of interests, the UK seems to have woken up from the cruel lessons and is beginning to change its China policy to offset the harm caused by the desperate feelings of the US and EU friends.