UK tells G7 that it’s time to ‘get tough with China’ on trade
The UK’s global partners need to “get tough with China” on its unfair trading practices, according to international trade secretary Liz Truss.
Truss has called for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to be reformed and for China to stop designating as a developing country within the body, which means it benefits from looser rules on international trade.
Truss will today host a meeting of trade ministers from G7 countries in the lead up to this year’s G7 leaders summit in Cornwall.
The Department of International Trade said in a statement last night that Truss would push “G7 partners to develop a set of principles for digital trade, underlining the common goals of trade ministers around open digital markets and the fight against protectionism”.
Truss told the Financial Times today that the G7 has to shake-up current global trade rules and clampdown on China’s trading regime.
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“This is the time to get tough on China and their behaviour in the global trading system, but also modernise the WTO,” she said.
“The WTO was established when China was 10 per cent the size of the US economy – it is ludicrous that it is still self-designating as a developing country and those rules need to change.
“It doesn’t have strong rules on digital and data trade, which is getting increasingly important, and is greatly important during Covid.”
China has been widely accused of stealing intellectual property and trading with goods that have been made with forced labour or do not comply with environmental standards – charges the country denies.
Truss said these were “pernicious practices” and that “public trust has been corroded” by them.
It comes after the UK’s combined review into defence and foreign policy appeared to offer an olive branch to China, after escalating tensions over the past year.
The review said the UK would “invest in enhanced China facing capabilities”, while adding that “open, trading economies like the UK will need to engage with China and remain open to Chinese trade and investment”.
China was also labelled as a “systemic challenge” in the review and not a threat to security, such as countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea.
However, foreign secretary Dominic Raab last week levelled sanctions on senior members of the Chinese Communist Party for its human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims.
This led to Beijing sanctioning a group of UK MPs and peers with records of speaking out against Chinese human rights abuses.