How will the world be different after coronavirus? Will everything return to the way it was or will there be lasting change? For this country, there is one thing that will clearly be different: the government’s approach to China. I understand that while Boris Johnson’s grand, integrated foreign policy review has been put on hold because of the pandemic, the work on Anglo-Sino relations has been brought forward as a matter of urgency. One of those heavily involved in the development of this new policy tells me that the aim is to get this country ‘off the trajectory of ever-increasing dependence’ on China.
The issue is not that Covid-19 emerged from Wuhan but what the crisis has revealed about the Chinese state and the UK’s dependence on it. Ministers have seen first-hand how reliant the UK is on China for vital goods — particularly personal protective equipment — and, more importantly, that this is not a normal trading relationship.
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