Liu Xiaoming to quit his role of Chinese ambassador to Britain

China’s long-serving envoy to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, a staunch defender of nearer UK-China financial ties and the imposition of new safety legal guidelines in Hong Kong, is standing down, marking the tip of an period in relations between the 2 nations that hit a excessive in 2015 however has since worsened markedly.

He is being changed by his nation’s vice-foreign minister, Zheng Zeguang, a former Cardiff University regulation scholar as soon as tipped to develop into China’s ambassador to the US, and nonetheless seen as a candidate for that publish in a pair of years’ time.

Liu, 64, has been ambassador since 2010, a marathon stint at a time when most ambassadors serve a four-year time period.

He has been a fierce critic of the UK resolution to ban the Chinese firm Huawei from its 5G networks, and likewise repeatedly denied that Uighur Muslims had been being pressured into detention camps in Xinjiang province.

The decline in UK-China relations was arguably beneath means earlier than China imposed new sovereignty legal guidelines on Hong Kong in June, however the brand new legal guidelines, seen by Britain as a breach of the China-UK joint declaration, paved the best way for a significant change in relations.

Liu got here to wider consideration on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show when he was proven footage of Uighur Muslims blindfolded and kneeling, and claimed the images were “fake”.

During the furore over Huawei, Liu mentioned Britain would possibly “bear the consequences” of treating China as a hostile nation, saying: “It has become questionable whether the UK can provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from other countries.”

He additionally accused the British authorities of making “irresponsible remarks on Hong Kong”, insisting at a sequence of fiery press conferences that protests within the former British colony weren’t about freedom, however had been stirred up by irresponsible foreigners.

In his final set-piece speech to the third China-UK financial and commerce discussion board, he mentioned the decline in political relations had not been matched by a slowdown in financial relations. Liu mentioned: “In 2019, trade volume between China and the UK hit a new record of $86.272bn [£64.4bn]. In the first 10 months of this year, trade in goods between our two countries increased by 2.8% year on year, faster than the growth rate of China’s overall foreign trade in the same period.” He was given the liberty of the City of London in 2018, an indication of the shut hyperlinks between British finance and China.

His private excessive level will most likely be when in 2015, President Xi Jinping paid a “super state visit” to the UK, and a golden period in relations was introduced.

The new ambassador shall be crucial for UK-China discussions on the local weather emergency, with the UK internet hosting the Cop26 in Glasgow subsequent yr and badly needing Chinese cooperation for the world to meet the extra formidable targets the UN will search to set on the November convention.

The new ambassador can even have to deal with the results of the UK offering Hong Kong citizens with British nationwide (abroad) passports the suitable from 31 January to keep in Britain to work and research for up to 5 years. They could then apply for settled standing and search citizenship after the sixth yr. The scheme additionally covers a BNO holder’s grownup youngsters, their spouses and their younger youngsters. Britain additionally ended its extradition settlement with Hong Kong in late July in protest on the Beijing-imposed safety regulation. It has not, nonetheless, imposed sanctions on any Chinese officers accountable for the suppression in Hong Kong.

Zheng’s appointment, first reported in South China Morning Post however not formally introduced within the UK, locations a specialist on the current US China confrontation on the helm of UK-China relations. He began his diplomatic profession in 1986, and targeting US points for greater than twenty years since 1990 earlier than turning into an assistant minister within the international affairs division in late 2012, after which vice-minister in 2015.

He has been on the frontline of China’s efforts to combat again in opposition to the Trump administration’s assaults on China for its dealing with of the preliminary coronavirus outbreak, claiming {that a} handful of US politicians had been turning America away from China.

Accusing the US of being the “biggest black hand” behind the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, he lately mentioned: “It’s not true that the US cares about Hong Kong’s democracy, human rights and autonomy; it’s true they want to make a mess in Hong Kong and sabotage China’s stable development.” He described the US sanctions in opposition to Chinese communist officers concerned in suppression of particular person rights in Hong Kong as barbaric.

China expects the UK to endure after Brexit and doubtless come beneath the wing of the US administration so his data of US politics would stand him in good stead in coping with Boris Johnson’s seek for a brand new role as a “global Britain”.