In the post-Brexit environment, at a time when the United Kingdom is looking to redefine its international positioning under the ‘Global Britain’ policy, one of the most
urgent priorities for London proves to be to restructure its relations with key global
players like China. The objective of this study is to examine factors influencing the
development of London’s policy towards Beijing in the period 2015–2022 and to verify whether the growing salience of a progressive liberal posture in the UK’s foreign
policy vis-à-vis China could account for the deterioration of bilateral relations that has
been experienced. The research attempts to investigate whether the UK’s initial modus
vivendi liberal economic engagement with China gave way to a renewed emphasis on
progressive liberal internationalist convictions manifested by the UK’s firm stance on
Chinese investments in British critical infrastructure and by an amplified criticism of
China’s repressive domestic record and aggressive global posture
https://brill.com/view/journals/ejea/21/3/article-p372_3.xml?rskey=2FWK1O&result=1
Vahid Nick Pay | orcid: 0000-0002-7162-6065
Diplomatic Studies Programme, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
vahid.nickpay@conted.ox.ac.uk
Piotr Buszta
Senior Diplomat, Republic of Poland
pbuszta@diplomacy.pl