China's ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang published an op-ed in the Telegraph newspaper insisting London adopt Beijing's views on Taiwan. Speaking to TaiwanPlus, Gray Sergeant of the London-based Council on Geostrategy says the op-ed aims to present Beijing as a defender of the postwar international order while linking its one-China principle to that order.
00:00So Gray, The Telegraph has published an op-ed from the Chinese ambassador to the UK where he says, in part, that Taiwan has never been a country and the UK should accept that position.
00:11What exactly is the Chinese ambassador trying to accomplish here and why publish this now?
00:16What he's trying to do is present Beijing as a defender of the post-World War international order and in doing so, try and perhaps contrast China with the United States, who would like to present as a force disrupting the world system.
00:39He's basically saying that the international order and the one China principle are one in the same thing.
00:43Why now? That's an interesting question.
00:47Well, we are marking the 80th anniversary of the Second World War.
00:50So it's only natural that Beijing wants to use this occasion to reinforce its claims to Taiwan.
00:56You've written in the past that the UK's position has always been that Taiwan's political status is undetermined, but has refrained from saying so since the 1970s.
01:05And you say that in future, a clarification from the UK may be needed.
01:10But why? Hasn't the status quo worked relatively well, at least for Britain, for many decades?
01:16So Britain for a long time maintained that Taiwan's status was undetermined, that it wasn't, as Beijing claims, a province of China.
01:25The status quo has worked quite well for everybody concerned.
01:29Peace has been maintained across the Straits for a long time now.
01:32But Beijing doesn't seem so comfortable with maintaining the status quo as in, in fact, trying to alter it itself.
01:40If countries around the world buy China's one China principle, it's going to make opposing any unilateral action taken by Beijing across the Straits very difficult.
01:51So it's about laying the groundwork and about establishing the rules around cross-strait relations.
01:58In the op-ed, the Chinese ambassador says that accepting Beijing's position on Taiwan is key to the development of China-UK relations.
02:07Some have taken that to be a demand of sorts from China. Do you see it that way?
02:11It certainly is a demand. The problem for UK-China relations, from at least Beijing's perspective, is that the UK does not agree with Beijing's claims.
02:24It has already, last year in the UK Parliament, clarified that it believes that Resolution 2758 made no determination on Taiwan's status.
02:34So if Beijing wants to push this further and keep on repeating its claims, unfortunately, we'll find that when push comes to shove, Britain will have to speak out and say something different.
02:45This op-ed comes amid several other tensions between China and the UK.
02:49There's been protests over this so-called mega-embassy that China wants to build in London, a Chinese spying case that was recently dropped.
02:57Now this op-ed.
02:58Keir Starmer, your country's prime minister, has said that he seeks steadier relations with China.
03:03Does this complicate things for him?
03:06I think the questions around national security, the alleged spy-in, the mega-emsy are going to be bigger issues for Keir Starmer.
03:14I don't think that currently Taiwan throws too many problems in the UK-China relationship.
03:23Actually, we've seen in the past year UK-Taiwan relations improving steadily.
03:28And that hasn't, it appears, been too detrimental to relations between London and Beijing.
03:35I think the problems will come if China keeps on pushing its one-China principle and insisting that the UK subscribe to beliefs that it does not believe in.
03:46If Beijing simply let the matter lie, then the British government may well say nothing.
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