Yin and Yang in China

Images of Mayor Boris Johnson and Chancellor George Osborne in China have featured large in the media over the last week. They have been dubbed Yin and Yang: Boris must be Yin, the softer, cuddlier one, the one that makes school girls giggle over references to Harry Potter and his first girl friend, and Osborne, Yang as he tackles tougher subjects, such as going nuclear with China.

In fact critics such as Will Hutton have been less kind and have instead suggested that the duo have sold out and opened the UK to all manner of risks through one sided economic concessions in the nuclear, banking and high tech sectors. He called them not so much Yin and Yang as wide-eyed Bambi and Thumper.

I am by and large in favour of Chinese inward investments into the UK and have blogged as much on the subject for London Loves Business. The typical Western reaction to the Chinese (with programme titles such as "The Chinese Are Coming" by the BBC) as unstoppable hegemonic forces need to be tempered by facts.

However the recent publicity attracted by Boris and Osborne have left me both bemused as well as uneasy. Whilst they were ostensibly in China to promote trade for the United Kingdom, we can all see (as was commented by Matthew D'Ancona in "All Roads lead to China for the next Tory Leader") that China was merely the proxy battleground for their leadership aspirations.

The same day as that article appeared in the Evening Standard, I was interviewed by one of their journalists asking if I thought the Government was guilty of sending out conflicting messages, offering fast track visas to the big spending Chinese visitors, whilst at the same time acting tough on immigration at home.

I was quoted as saying (extract from the Evening Standard 15 Oct):

"I am ..delighted about the fast-track visas due to be introduced. What would be even better is for the home Office to recognise that students should be taken out of the figures compiled for net migration. Pledges by the Tories to reduce net migration below 100,000 are meaningless and our higher education sector should not have to suffer as a result."

What I had also wanted to highlight was the threat posed by the illiberal Immigration Bill due to have its second reading on Tuesday 22 Oct. On the same day, a strike has been called by Bobby Chan (an immigration adviser and a Brit who was erroneously sent one of those Go Home texts by Capita) in protest against the very damaging "fishing raids" that have been occurring with regularity in Chinatown since the summer, unsettling the restaurateurs and local community. Of course, many of the unregulated workers who are subsequently released are merely waiting for the Home Office to clear the half a million back log of cases.

But coming back to Yin and Yang: we clearly need a more balanced approach to attracting the right investments into the UK, humane foreign policies as well as fair and workable immigration policies . And we would prefer less posturing by our politicians and more pragmatic solutions to our problems, please.