An interesting story bypassed the news agenda last week that could affect British interests in the future. The Chinese vice Premier Li Keqiang visited London and other parts of the EU to sign multi-billion pound trade agreements. He was also trying to rebuild China’s image after the Nobel Peace Prize, where the winner Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese pro-democracy campaigner, was absent through house arrest. China is opening its frontiers to the world and formulating its own foreign policy, proscribed to be undermining the work of many Western Governments insisting on human rights and education, compared to China’s open trade policy with any nation. To what extent can countries like the UK lecture other nations about human rights, yet trade openly with them. Can foreign policy in any way be idealistic or does pragmatism rule the waves. In any instance, self-interest or supranationalism is always going to affect one party.
Anglo-Sino relations have historically been fractured. The Chinese have always felt that British global hegemony had subjugated their proud traditions and the effects of two 19th century opium wars humiliated the Chinese Emperor and its people. These measures saw the frosty handover in 1997 of Hong Kong, in what the British saw as the end of Empire and the Chinese saw as a return to status quo. Almost 15 years after the handover, to what extent can Britain lecture China about human rights, not because of its own colonial past but more the obvious economic and cultural gulf between the two nations. There have been run ins over the past few years; the former Climate Change Secretary and now Labour leader Ed Miliband, angered the Chinese Government over his comments that they had destroyed potential negotiations at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. Ties were broken off after the UK saw Chinese policy in Zambia as a form of colonialism and then there is the continuous argument that perpetuates over Tibet.
The ultimate goal of foreign policy between countries, effectively nowadays, is to pursue trade and maintain friendly relations. Realists identify with this and the dictum of 19th century Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston is often quoted, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” Newer forms of diplomacy like the one pursued by American President Woodrow Wilson through the advent of the League of Nations ultimately failed, and failed disastrously because of the self-interest of individual states. The EU and other trading blocs have been more successful because the financial incentives are axiomatic. The pursuit of a moral foreign policy has been unsuccessful because no matter how pressing an issue is, if 5000 defence jobs are lost because of a philosophical foreign secretary then the people will call for his head. The idealistic legacy of William Gladstone perhaps is something to learn from history. A grand social reformer at home, but his dogmatic pursuit of Christian interventionalism saw him fail to convince other nations that it was for the moral good. Something his indefatigable rival Benjamin Disraeli saw from the Opposition benches as naive. Perhaps the belief the world can be shaped by universal truths is a failing itself.
It is therefore in Britain’s interests to be trading with countries like Libya. There is the obvious financial benefit but there is a diplomatic discourse that breeds ideas. Opening economic borders opens groups to the realms of democracy and free speech. China learnt in South Africa, a country with a history of human rights abuses, that it cannot expect South African workers to work in the same conditions as its Chinese counterparts. Britain will continue to increase trade in China, Turkey and Russia but it will be well aware that in the aftermath of recession the pound speaks louder than a human rights lobby.
The ultimate goal of foreign policy between countries, effectively nowadays, is to pursue trade and maintain friendly relations. Realists identify with this and the dictum of 19th century Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston is often quoted, “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” Newer forms of diplomacy like the one pursued by American President Woodrow Wilson through the advent of the League of Nations ultimately failed, and failed disastrously because of the self-interest of individual states. The EU and other trading blocs have been more successful because the financial incentives are axiomatic. The pursuit of a moral foreign policy has been unsuccessful because no matter how pressing an issue is, if 5000 defence jobs are lost because of a philosophical foreign secretary then the people will call for his head. The idealistic legacy of William Gladstone perhaps is something to learn from history. A grand social reformer at home, but his dogmatic pursuit of Christian interventionalism saw him fail to convince other nations that it was for the moral good. Something his indefatigable rival Benjamin Disraeli saw from the Opposition benches as naive. Perhaps the belief the world can be shaped by universal truths is a failing itself.
It is therefore in Britain’s interests to be trading with countries like Libya. There is the obvious financial benefit but there is a diplomatic discourse that breeds ideas. Opening economic borders opens groups to the realms of democracy and free speech. China learnt in South Africa, a country with a history of human rights abuses, that it cannot expect South African workers to work in the same conditions as its Chinese counterparts. Britain will continue to increase trade in China, Turkey and Russia but it will be well aware that in the aftermath of recession the pound speaks louder than a human rights lobby.
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