The relations between China and the UK will develop steadily despite the impending change in the British cabinet, Chinese analysts said Thursday.

Tony Blair announced his resignation as prime minister and Labor Party leader Thursday after being in power for a decade, hailed as a new dawn for the UK darkened later by the war in Iraq.

Blair adopted a pragmatic approach toward China during his 10 years in office, which played a positive role in promoting Sino-British relations, said Yang Fang, an expert in European studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Gordon Brown, Blair's finance minister and his most likely successor, is not expected to make any substantial changes in the country's foreign policy, he said.

"Different from Blair, who is a pioneer and has been ready to challenge some traditional conceptions, Brown is more cautious in his political style," she said. "But he is as pragmatic as Blair when it comes to foreign policies."

Great changes have taken place in China and the UK and across the rest of the world in the past decade, and their relations, both political and economic, have developed smoothly with frequent high-level visits, Yang said.

Sino-British ties have maintained a sound momentum of development in recent years, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing.

"The two countries have set up a series of mechanisms on high-level reciprocal visits and political dialogue and have developed all-round and wide-ranging pragmatic cooperation," she said.

But Jiang stopped short of commenting on the resignation of British Prime Minister Tony Blair Thursday.

There were triumphs for Blair: three consecutive election victories, a booming economy and diplomacy that brought peace to Northern Ireland.

But his decade of achievements has been overtaken by the shadows of the war in Iraq since 2003.

"Blair has tried to raise the UK's falling standings on the international stage, but what he did made him controversial as a prime minister, particularly taking Britain into the Iraq war," Yang said.

(China Daily May 11, 2007)