During his speech to Chatham House ‘Navigating the new world order: The UK and the emerging powers’ last night, Jeremy Brown MP, Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, raised some interesting points that are worth considering in a less formal forum.

Alongside some statistics on the growth of China, which were doubtless chosen as much for their shock as illustrative value (for example, that China currently has 8,000km of high speed rail track, more than the rest of the world combined, yet will have 13,000km by the end of next year), he was keen to emphasise that today’s generation in China live fundamentally different lives from those of their grandparents. This brought to mind the importance of the ‘magic washing machine‘ that Hans Rosling focussed on in one of his many excellent TED Talks. Brown argued that one key UK export, one of our continuing strengths in the changing world, is our values. In the Q&A session following the speech, unsurprisingly, this led to concerns over whether the UK would be able to influence China’s position in certain areas through trade. By way of reply, Brown referred to a debate he had been having, over whether economic liberalisation always leads to social liberalisation. Historically, it always has, but will this continue in the future, particularly in the case of China? His view was that it would, but, like many others, with reservations.

The other point made that caught my interest was that in a more globalised world, we Britons need a more globalised outlook. Our general knowledge of key political figures in the emerging powers is poor, and our interest in engaging with these nations is less than it should be. In this, as Brown put it, ‘Britain needs a big wake-up call’.

The just-released Chatham House-YouGov Survey 2011 ‘British Attitudes Towards the UK’s International Priorities’ suggests this lack of knowledge and interest. Many members of the public, when asked whether Britain should have stronger or weaker ties with various countries (including the US, Brazil, India, Turkey and Indonesia) overwhelmingly said the involvement should stay the same. With the exception of China (with whom respondents wanted stronger ties), ‘stay the same’ far outstripped ‘stronger’, ‘weaker’ and ‘dont’ know’. But this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of current strategies; ‘stay the same’ would be the answer to give in a survey if you don’t know what the current involvement is, but don’t want to admit to it.

So, while the public accept that we must engage with emerging powers in terms of business, their interest in them on a personal level is more limited. This is something we will have to confront in order to make full use of our best advantage, Soft Power. While acknowledged by Brown, it was somewhat downplayed in favour of commercial competitiveness (which is perhaps to be expected from a government that has taken an axe to the funding of our greatest soft power institution, the BBC World Service). To overlook soft power is to overlook what we can and should do best.

Sources

• Jeremy Brown MP, Navigating the new world order: The UK and the emerging powers. Speech with Q&A heard live at Chatham House 20.07.2011, transcript of the speech available here.
• The Chatham House-YouGov Survey 2011: British Attitudes Towards the UK’s International Priorities (Survey Analysis by Robin Niblett). Printed edition used. Survey available here, the specific data referred to here.