When it comes to China, the EU tried gently to ‘de-risk’ without ‘de-coupling.’ Donald Trump put America first and launched a full-on trade war. Until last week, the U.K. took an approach that looked a lot like muddling through.
That luxury’s no longer available to it after the collapse of a high-profile espionage trial thrust relations with Beijing firmly into the spotlight. The U.K.’s public prosecutor last month dropped the case against two men accused of spying for the Chinese government, heaping pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer amid claims he should have done more to make sure it went ahead.
If a degree of obscurity was meant to help him quietly reset what King’s College London Professor of Chinese Studies Kerry Brown termed the "unwieldy mess” of Chinese-U.K. relations, the last few weeks have instead made them a political football.
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