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Viewpoints China comes bearing gifts for better understanding
Viewpoints China comes bearing gifts for better understanding | China comes bearing gifts for better understanding |
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| Viewpoints | |
| Tuesday, 11 January 2011 | |
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China’s Vice Premier, Li KeQiang arrives in Britain for a four day visit, the last leg of his European tour following his earlier visits to Spain and Germany. It signed nearly £6 billion of business deals in Germany, £5 billion in Spain and reaffirmed his country will buy Spanish government bonds. What will China invest or buy in Britain? So far, it has signed deals worth £2.6 billion, far less than those signed in Spain and Germany.
Cui Hongjian of the China Institute of International Studies told the People’s Daily newspaper:
“Britain needs China because it needs international investment and overseas markets to solve its economic problems – such as the low purchasing power as a result of its tightened monetary policy.”
While Liu Xiaoming, China’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, wrote in The Daily Telegraph:
“China is doing what a Chinese proverb says about ‘sending charcoal in snowy weather’.”
China will no doubt sign business deals whilst the Vice Premier is in the UK and Cameron will announce such deals as a success of UK-China talks. Is there all there is to it – business deals?
Before 2008, China would not even consider prioritising solving the West's financial or economic problems. It needs to prioritise its own economy. China is in the middle of a huge redeployment of its economy and needs to get employment and social balance right. This is what China’s leaders wake up thinking about - all day and night. China shares her borders with fourteen countries, she needs to focus on her neighbours who will fundamentally affect China’s stability and security. China has a long history of peaceful development, her people both long for a happy and peaceful life and enjoy harmonious relations with her neighbours. World peace is an important condition for China to achieve moderate prosperity, and China’s development in turn is conducive to world peace.
China is experiencing some tensions with Japan, the Korean peninsula and the South China Sea, not least the Kashmir border. These are issues China needs the world to come together and not leave China isolated.
Britain needs to look at its China policies again, it is not only just trade or business deals. Those who make human rights the sole determining issue, muddy the waters. China's reaction to the Nobel Prize was heavily criticised by the West without any basic understanding of different values, she is unlikely to move much closer to Western values.
China is building a society where her people can receive education, get paid through work, have access to medical services, old-age support, decent housing, enough food and clothing and lead a well-off life. This is paramount and any distractions to achieving those basic needs are ignored.
The West can try to understand them as they are and work with them. Finger pointing does not work, sharing experience is a much better approach, and usually much acceptable.
China seeks equal political partnership and mutual respect, economic partnership of mutual benefit and common development, cultural partnership of dialogue and mutual learning, and strategic partnership of close collaboration in international affairs.
China, as a major country, does not shirk its responsibilities. In recent years, it has arranged billions of dollars of debt relief for developing countries and it has contributed its share of peacekeepers. It has acceded to nearly 100 multilateral international conventions. It has made contributions to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, the International Monetary Fund bail-out programme, the reconstruction of Afghanistan and disaster relief. China will remain a conscientious global player in fulfilling international responsibilities.
Businesses do want better relations with China to enable more access to the Chinese market, they will, nevertheless, find their own subtle ways to build businesses with China.
Every country wants a bigger share of the Chinese market, China will accommodate them. Countries which share China’s growth with political parity, respect and trust will be the beneficiaries. Britain needs to be one of those countries.
by Sonny Leong, Publisher and Chair, Chinese for Labour
January 2011
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