Failing to engage with China would be “a betrayal of our national interest”, the foreign secretary will say.
In a speech to Mansion House on Tuesday, James Cleverly will insist the government is willing to be robust in its discussions with Beijing.
But he will add: “No significant global problem – from climate change to pandemic prevention, from economic stability to nuclear proliferation – can be solved without China.
“To give up on China would be to give up on addressing humanity’s biggest problems.”
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The government is under increasing pressure from prominent Conservative backbenchers – including former prime minister Liz Truss – to take a tougher stance with Beijing.
During his leadership campaign last summer, the now-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the country was “the biggest long-term threat to Britain”.
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But after taking the keys to Number 10, he appeared to soften his language, instead saying the UK should stand up to China “with robust pragmatism”.
Mr Cleverly is expected to echo this sentiment, “rejecting any attempts to describe a country of China’s scale and complexity in one word or phrase, whether ‘threat’, ‘partner’ or ‘adversary'”.
He will say: “It would be clear and easy – perhaps even satisfying – for me to declare a new Cold War and say that our goal is to isolate China.
“Clear, easy, satisfying – and wrong. Because it would be a betrayal of our national interest and a wilful misunderstanding of the modern world.”
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However, Mr Cleverly was also pledge to be “unflinchingly realistic about China’s authoritarianism”, and be “clear about our right to act when Beijing breaks its international obligations or abuses human rights”.
The foreign secretary will say: “We do not expect our disagreements with China to be swiftly overcome, but we do expect China to observe the laws and obligations that it has freely accepted.
“If China breaks them, we are entitled to say so and to act, as we did when China dismantled the freedoms of Hong Kong, violating its own pledge, and we gave nearly 3 million of Hong Kong’s people a path to British citizenship.
“Peaceful co-existence has to begin with respecting fundamental laws and institutions, including the UN Charter, which protects every country against invasion”.
‘Revulsion’ over treatment of Uyghur people
Elsewhere in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Easter Banquet, Mr Cleverly will condemn “the mass incarceration of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang”, adding: “I hope our Chinese counterparts do not believe their own rhetoric that we are merely seeking to interfere in their domestic affairs.
“Just as we should try harder to understand China, I hope that Chinese officials will understand that when their government builds a 21st century version of the gulag archipelago, locking up over a million people at the height of this campaign, often for doing nothing more than observing their religion, this stirs something deep within us.
“Our revulsion is heartfelt and shared unanimously across our country and beyond. We are not going to let what is taking place in Xinjiang drop or be brushed aside.”
And the foreign secretary also call on Beijing to be open about the purpose of its recent large military expansion.
