At least James Cleverly had somebody to meet. The Foreign Secretary’s last effort to get to Beijing was postponed after his Chinese counterpart disappeared in late June. Former foreign minister Qin Gang has not been seen or heard of since. Gang’s whereabouts are as mysterious as Cleverly’s China policy, which is beginning to feel a lot like a re-tread of the incoherent and failed past strategy of ‘engagement’.
That policy, as far as it can be described as one, was driven by greed and gullibility. It added up to little more than kowtowing to Beijing, largely ignoring its growing repression at home and aggression overseas, while at the same time allowing Communist party-linked entities unfettered access to the most sensitive corners of the British economy and academia.
Cleverly, the first senior minister to visit Beijing in five years, met China’s new foreign minister Wang Yi (actually an old foreign minister re-instated) and its vice-president Han Zheng in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
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