{"id":57934,"date":"2023-08-30T22:04:36","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T13:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/aug\/30\/western-politicians-face-tough-balancing-act-on-visits-to-beijing"},"modified":"2023-08-30T22:04:36","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T13:04:36","slug":"western-politicians-face-tough-balancing-act-on-visits-to-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=57934","title":{"rendered":"Western politicians face tough balancing act on visits to Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>UK\u2019s James Cleverly is latest to travel to Beijing hoping to improve ties and change Chinese foreign policy<\/p>\n<p>The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, on Wednesday described his government\u2019s relationship with Beijing as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/aug\/30\/british-foreign-secretary-james-cleverly-beijing-china-visit-trip\">\u201ccomplicated and sophisticated\u201d<\/a>. He said the UK\u2019s approach was \u201cclear-eyed\u201d and pragmatic, neither seeking to isolate the world\u2019s second largest economy nor shying away from raising disagreements.<\/p>\n<p>The balancing act may prove difficult. Cleverly is the latest in a series of western government officials \u2013 from the US secretary of state, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2023\/jun\/15\/us-secretary-state-blinken-china-visit\">Antony Blinken<\/a>, to the French president, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/apr\/05\/macron-heads-china-hoping-talk-xi-jinping-changing-stance-ukraine\">Emmanuel Macron<\/a> \u2013 to have visited China in recent months hoping to repair soured relations and trade ties. Few have had much success.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/aug\/30\/western-politicians-face-tough-balancing-act-on-visits-to-beijing\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UK\u2019s James Cleverly is latest to travel to Beijing hoping to improve ties and change Chinese foreign policyThe UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, on Wednesday described his government\u2019s relationship with Beijing as \u201ccomplicated and sophisticated\u201d. H&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,319,52,45,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-foreign-policy","category-uk-news","category-us-foreign-policy","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57935,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57934\/revisions\/57935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}