The Golden Era and after: UK policy towards China 1997-2020

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This research project focuses on tracing the origins and the development of UK government policy towards China from 1997 to 2020. In the existing literature the period 1997-2016 is generally understood as the `Golden Era' consisting in large part of favourable and positive relations between the UK and China. The project will firstly research the political and economic determinants of policy towards China developed initially by the Blair administration. This provides the context for analysing the change in UK policy towards China in the period 2016-2020. The second part of the study will therefore focus on the key episodes which have led to a reorientation of UK government relations with China and seek to assess the significance of the work of groups such as the China Research Group (CRG) within the UK parliament. CRG was formed in 2020 following the success of the European Research Group in promoting Brexit and plays a major, and increasingly important, role in policy debate on China. The conceptual framework used in the study draws on theories of depoliticisation developed in political science to understand changes in state policy in the last twenty years. The thesis will combine traditional `statecraft' views of depoliticization (relevant particularly under Blair, Brown and Cameron) with notions of discursive depoliticization developed in critical international relations theory, mostly notably in respect of academic literature on the `War on Terror'. This will be the first in-depth academic study of the significance of groups such as the CRG in British politics and one of the first studies to use theories of discursive depoliticization at the level of domestic and international politics. The research offers an original contribution in three areas. First, by combining traditional and discursive depoliticisation it offers a novel conceptual framework for political analysis. Second, the research offers an original contribution to understanding the policymaking process by offering a new theorization of `advocacy groups' such as CRG within the Conservative party and UK political system. Finally, it offers an original methodological framework for analysing the early impact of the pandemic showing how it provided a catalyst for the reorientation of foreign policy, specifically UK-China relations. . A qualitative methodology will be employed using process tracing techniques for key episodes grounded in documentary/textual analysis and semi-structured elite interviewing. Significant documentary material is already available in the public domain in the form of government publications, memoirs, biographies and material from relevant business associations. Documentary material from the UK National Archives will be consulted as it becomes available under the revised 20-year rule (for example, Prime Minister's Office: Correspondence and Papers, 1997-2010, PREM 49 became accessible in 2021 - 187 files). Extensive documentary material is available for the second part of the research for example the CRG archive which includes reports, daily and weekly reviews, commentaries, webinars, and extensive resources on UK-China relations. Semi-structured interviews will be carried out in particular to cover the Cameron and post-Cameron period.