Join us online for a lively debate exploring China’s role on the global stage.

From a UK perspective, this debate examines how Britain should understand and respond to China’s growing global influence. China is simultaneously a major trading partner, a geopolitical rival, and a state whose political system and international behaviour often diverge sharply from UK values and interests.

The discussion will explore three core tensions. First, economic interdependence: the UK’s reliance on Chinese trade, investment, and supply chains versus concerns about strategic dependency, market distortion, and economic coercion. Second, security and geopolitics: China’s role in global governance, technology, defence, and regional stability, and what this means for the UK’s alliances, particularly with the US and NATO. Third, values and norms: how issues such as human rights, the rule of law, and international norms should shape UK policy towards China.

Rather than assuming a single answer, the debate asks whether China should be treated as a partner, a competitor, a threat, or—more realistically—a complex mix of all three. It invites participants to consider what a coherent, long-term UK strategy towards China should look like, and what trade-offs this implies for Britain’s economy, security, and global role as a mid-sized power in a shifting international order led, in part, by the United Kingdom.