Raffaelo Pantucci
Amongst the strangest sights of the recent Shanghai Expo was the British seed cathedral pavilion. Brilliantly simple in design, it stood out for touching on environmentalism whilst hovering architecturally like a real-life optical illusion. It was also one of the most popular pavilions, with long queues reflecting curiosity about the space, but also the positive light in which
As with any bilateral relationship, the Sino-British one has gone through its awkward phases. Some in
What
Mission To Trade
Enmeshed with this consistency is the message that trade is the key element in the British-China bilateral relationship. The strategy paper is quite clear in 'getting the best for the UK from
In his preface, then-Foreign Secretary
This economic focus is not something which is restricted to
Chancellor
The British press on the other hand largely focused on whether Cameron was going to raise the question of human rights and the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, highlighting the problem with the trade approach. Much to the dismay of activists,
This expresses itself in a number of ways. For example, while in 2008 the world watched as rioters in Lhasa were aggressively put down and protestors took to the streets around the world, then Prime Minister
Similarly, towards the end of the year, the British government clarified that it, 'like every other EU member state, and the United States...regard[s] Tibet as part of
Apparently unprompted, the clarification was very well received in
Kernel Of Concern
Problematically, after all these careful approaches, late last year
In such actions lie the kernels of concern that underlie British public wariness towards
While
While diplomats say they are able to discuss sensitive human rights issues in a formal setting with their Chinese counterparts and that this is an achievement and shift on he Chinese part, there is little evidence this discussion is resulting in any particular changes in
The same can be said for non-proliferation or climate change; issues which British foreign policy supposedly places at the heart of its agenda.
With the conclusion of the Expo, the seed cathedral has been dismantled. In a show of popularity, it took merely two minutes for eight thousand seeds to be sold at an online auction site in
Raffaelo Pantucci, visiting scholar, Shanghai Acadamy of Social Sciences, working on a project on EU-China Relations as an EU STFP Fellow.
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