UK-China relations: China must come clean on ‘biggest military build-up in peacetime’

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is to urge China to come clean about its “biggest military build-up in peacetime” in a major speech warning of the risks of a new cold war with Beijing.

In a set-piece address to be delivered at Mansion House in London, he will warn of the risks of a “tragic miscalculation” in the Indo-Pacific if China’s aggression continues.

Cleverly is expected to urge China to be “open about the doctrine and intent behind its military expansion”.

“Transparency is surely in everyone’s interests and secrecy can only increase the risk of tragic miscalculation.”

However, Cleverly will also argue that Britain must continue to engage with China, despite any “revulsion” it might feel at the gulags being set up in the Xinjiang region.

In a move likely to anger the hawkish wing of the Conservative Party, Cleverly will say it is a betrayal of British interests to isolate China.

“It would be clear and easy – perhaps even satisfying – for me to declare a new cold war and say that our goal is to isolate China,” he will say.

“Clear, easy, satisfying – and wrong. Because it would be a betrayal of our national interest and a wilful misunderstanding of the modern world.”

The speech comes amid growing tensions with Beijing over fears it will launch a bid to take over Taiwan, just as Russia has tried to do in Ukraine.

There are fears China's Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan as Vladimir Putin has done to Ukraine. Photo / AP

China will be the sole focus of the Mansion House speech, a platform traditionally used by foreign secretaries to set out their views on a broad range of foreign policy issues.

Cleverly will not mention Sudan, even though the Foreign Office has come in for criticism over its failure to help more British nationals trapped in the country.

British troops landed in Port Sudan on Monday to scout out a possible evacuation, but ministers faced accusations their efforts lagged behind those of France, Germany and the US.

China has been expanding its nuclear missile silos and the Pentagon believes that if it continues at its current pace, it will probably have a stockpile of 1500 nuclear warheads by 2035.

The country is also developing hypersonic missiles that can evade US defences, alongside space weapons that can knock out satellites.

Beijing has also converted atolls in the South China Sea into actual islands, installing airstrips and military facilities on them.

In his speech, the Foreign Secretary will say: “We do not expect our disagreements with China to be swiftly overcome, but we do expect China to observe the laws and obligations that it has freely accepted.

“If China breaks them, we are entitled to say so and to act, as we did when China dismantled the freedoms of Hong Kong, violating its own pledge, and we gave nearly three million of Hong Kong’s people a path to British citizenship.

“Peaceful co-existence has to begin with respecting fundamental laws and institutions, including the UN Charter, which protects every country against invasion.”

Setting out the importance of engagement with China, Cleverly will say: “No significant global problem – from climate change to pandemic prevention, from economic stability to nuclear proliferation – can be solved without China.

“To give up on China would be to give up on addressing humanity’s biggest problems.”

The speech will condemn China’s repression in Xinjiang and pledge that the UK will continue to highlight the suffering of the Uyghur people.

“When Britain condemns the mass incarceration of the Uighur people in Xinjiang, I hope our Chinese counterparts do not believe their own rhetoric that we are merely seeking to interfere in their domestic affairs,” Cleverly will say.

“Just as we should try harder to understand China, I hope that Chinese officials will understand that when their government builds a 21st century version of the gulag archipelago, locking up over a million people at the height of this campaign, often for doing nothing more than observing their religion, this stirs something deep within us.

“Our revulsion is heartfelt and shared unanimously across our country and beyond. We are not going to let what is taking place in Xinjiang drop or be brushed aside.”