David Cameron has promised to create a \”partnership for growth and reform\” as he visits China on a trade mission with more than 100 UK business leaders.
The prime minister also pledged to put his \”full political weight\” behind a proposed agreement to free up trading between China and the European Union.
He is due to hold talks with premier Li Keqiang on a separate China-UK deal said to be worth £1.8bn a year.
Some EU states fear a flood of cheap imports if a wider pact is approved.
However, the European Commission is due to begin investment treaty negotiations in the New Year.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Ed Miliband is to warn the government not to compete with China in a \”race to the bottom\” on pay, but to focus on creating a \”high-skill, high-tech, high-wage\” economy.
Mr Cameron\’s promise now to \’respect\’ and \’understand\’ China is the price he has had to pay to thaw what was a diplomatic deep freeze ”
Writing in Chinese magazine Caixin, Mr Cameron declared his ambition to use this week\’s visit to help forge \”a partnership for growth and reform that can help to deliver the Chinese dream and long-term prosperity for Britain too\”.
He welcomed signals from last month\’s third plenum of the ruling Communist Party that China wanted to open up more under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, who took up office a year ago.
Mr Cameron said he wanted to show that \”an open Britain is the ideal partner for an opening China\”.
He added: \”Britain is uniquely placed to make the case for deepening the European Union\’s trade and investment relationship with China.
My visit to China can plant the seeds of a long-term relationship which will benefit China, Britain and the world for generations to come”
\”Building on the recent launch of EU-China negotiations on investment, and on China\’s continued commitment to economic reform, I now want to set a new long-term goal of an ambitious and comprehensive EU-China free trade agreement.
\”And as I have on the EU-US deal, so I will put my full political weight behind such a deal which could be worth tens of billions of dollars every year.\”
Mr Cameron believes that eliminating tariffs in the 20 sectors where they are highest, such as vehicles, pharmaceuticals and electrical goods, could save UK exporters £600m a year.
During the first day of his second trip to China as prime minister, he is scheduled to attend the official opening of a new academy in Beijing for training technicians, salesmen and service staff for Jaguar Land Rover, which is signing a £4.5bn agreement to provide 100,000 cars to the National Sales Company over the next year.
via BBC News – David Cameron promises China ‘growth partnership’.
See also:https://www.asian-studies.org/eaa/watt.htm – Are there any parallels?
Qianlong meets MacCartney:
Collision of two world views
By JohnR Watts
“The Macartney mission of 1792–94 is a defining episode in the modern encounter between China and the West. It is the first major event in which British diplomats well read in the ideas of the European Enlightenment came face to face with the leadership of the world’s greatest and most populous land power.
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On the British side, the Macartney mission came armed with a series of goals appropriate to an industrializing nation that was rapidly developing a world-wide trading system. As Adam Smith had pointed out, the British were a nation of shopkeepers and traders, and trade was becoming the key to their access to power and prosperity. In the 1790s the British government of Pitt and Dundas was busy reconstructing the British mandate in India to reduce the political power of the East India Company and create a less mercantile and more open trading system. Because trade with China had become a significant factor in the development of British power in India, they wanted to cut through the restrictions of the Canton trading system imposed by the Qianlong government on European merchants in 1760 and negotiate a freer trade environment with China as a whole. They also wanted to establish a direct liaison—along European diplomatic lines—with the Qing Court. Because of his erudition, diplomatic experience, and familiarity with British policy in India, Macartney was in principle an ideal person to represent the British government on such a mission.
But beyond these goals, Macartney and his associates came to China with perceptions about trade and national intercourse which were certain to cause friction with their Chinese hosts. As heirs of Galileo, Newton, and Locke, and contemporaries of the French Enlightenment philosophers, they regarded themselves as representatives of a modern, rational and specifically scientific world outlook. Within their lifetimes British technicians had developed chronometers needed to determine longitude, which would greatly increase the power and profitability of British navigation. They lived in a world in which Adam Smith had worked out the advantages of trade, James Watt had harnessed the power of steam, and Captain Cook had explored vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Buoyed by such developments, the Macartney mission came to China not just to promote trade and diplomacy, but to assess China’s status as a rational order and to collect data on matters of interest to scientific as well as political colleagues. These latter goals were to some extent achieved, although not in a manner favorable to China’s reputation in Europe.
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 