Description
Managing the rise of China has become a dilemma for most governments from across the international system. Britain’s departure from the EU, if anything, is only making this conundrum worse for London. Not only Britain will be on the lookout for new partnerships, but it will have to take responsibilities for decisions previously shared with Brussels.
In order to unpack these issues, this paper takes the following steps. Firstly, drawing on Manuel Castells’s work, it frames the tension between space of (financial) flows and (political) place, arguing that the “China-factor” results from the “blowback” of US-led globalisation. Secondly, the paper argues that compared to other countries, post-Brexit Britain faces a more challenging scenario. Indeed, the economic-security fault lines have been complicated by several layers of complexity, such as the UK-US special relationship; the row over Xinjiang’s re-education camps; and the Hong Kong’s protests. Events in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, in particular, remind that economic and security interests are not the only factors at play, but that rule of law continues to be a crucial soft power device. This reveals a degree of resilience of British power in the century of geopolitical colossi.
