New world order: can Britain, America and Australia contain China?

In the space of just a few years, Britain has gone from China’s would-be best friend to part of a pact to counter it. When President Xi Jinping came to London in 2015, Downing Street pulled out all the stops. Xi stayed at Buckingham Palace, visited Chequers and signed — of all things — a cyber security agreement. The police went to extraordinary lengths to clamp down on protests by Free Tibet supporters and a Tiananmen Square survivor. Yet just six years later the UK has now joined with Australia and the US in Aukus, a new alliance designed to check China’s power in the Pacific.

Britain is no longer trying to stay neutral in the competition between the US and China. It has firmly sided with the United States. It looks as if the contours of the next 30 years of British foreign policy have just been fixed.

The new alliance is all about mutual interest. The Aussies wanted lasting protection from China, which France could not provide, so Britain stepped in, with America, ready to share nuclear-powered submarine technology. Joe Biden is looking beyond Nato, to a new coalition of the willing prepared to help it in its bid to check Chinese power in Asia. Critics wonder what muscle we could possibly add to the US navy, but that is not the point. The US has secured a toughening of the UK’s line on China. And because of the institutional nature of this three-way alliance, it can be confident that Britain won’t change its mind and try to court favour with Beijing again.

‘The relationship has foundations deep enough that it can survive whatever political winds are blowing,’ says one British source. This is vital. It means that the pact doesn’t depend on any personal chemistry between leaders; that defence and technology cooperation between these three countries will now continue regardless of how well the residents of the White House, Downing Street and the Lodge get on.