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UK top diplomat's tough stand in China: No one should legitimize Vladimir Putin
Britain aims to improve its relationship with China which has been strained by issues including China’s crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong.
UK foreign secretary James Cleverly urged China to help bring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to end. He is currently visiting Beijing to mend the UK’s ties with the country. In an interview, James Cleverly said that he called on Chinese officials to stand by their past commitments to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity while responding to a question on Russian president Vladimir Putin accepting China’s invitation to visit amid allegations of war crimes.
“My visit here is about the bilateral relationship between the UK and China. I have said that Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine cannot be justified by Moscow or indeed anywhere else," he said.
Britain aims to improve its relationship with China which has been strained by issues including China’s crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong. His visit also set the stage for the first one-on-one meeting between UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and Chinese president Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in India next month.
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China is “a country with fundamentally different values to ours and we should be robust in standing up for the things that matter to us, not just for our values but for our interests,” Rishi Sunak said, adding, “But alongside that, like all our allies, whether that’s America or Canada or Australia and others, it’s sensible to engage with people so that we can find a common ground on the issues where we can make progress together.”
James Cleverly met with his counterpart Wang Yi and China's vice president Han Zheng, according to Chinese state media. The basis for the “healthy and stable” development of the bilateral relationship is through economic and trade cooperation, Xinhua News Agency said in its readout of James Cleverly’s meeting with Han.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Taiwan, “The UK government’s position has remained consistent that there should be no unilateral change to the status quo, that any changes should be done through discussion on both sides of the Taiwan Strait."
