Beijing's abrupt cancellation of the latest session of the UK-China human rights dialogue, due to take place today, offers an uncomfortable insight into Britain's increasingly strained relations with the 21st century's rising global superpower. Whether the issue is personal freedom, climate change, or nuclear proliferation, the Brown government is struggling with a new China syndrome that can be summed up this way: "we" don't like their attitude but "they" couldn't give two figs.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the human rights meeting, of which there are two each year under a scheme dating back to the Hong Kong handover in 1997, had been postponed rather than cancelled, although he admitted no new date has been set. But official irritation at the apparent snub is palpable. China's decision was described as "extremely unfortunate", which is diplomat-speak for bloody rude.

Beijing gave no reason for its move. While British officials indicated it may have been for "technical reasons", a more plausible explanation is that Beijing's Communist party rulers decided to punish Britain for its outspoken criticism of last month's execution of Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen, for alleged drug offences.

China's refusal to entertain numerous clemency pleas from Shaikh's family and the government was a political as much as a judicial decision. Gordon Brown declared himself "appalled". China reacted sharply, expressing "strong dissatisfaction" at his comments. But Ivan Lewis, a Foreign Office minister, went even further in a BBC interview.

Lewis said the execution was a "deeply depressing day for anyone with a modicum of compassion or commitment to justice in Britain and throughout the world ... As that country [China] plays a greater role in the world they have to understand their responsibility to adhere to the most basic standards of human rights. China will only be fully respected when and if they make the choice to join the human rights mainstream."

China seems to be exacting cold revenge for these hot words. Shaikh's execution, and the suspension of the human rights dialogue, constitute a direct kick in the teeth for Britain's policy of "comprehensive" engagement with China on human rights and specifically, for its long-standing funding of projects in what it calls "three priority areas: abolishing the death penalty, reforming the criminal justice system, and promoting freedom of expression".

Worse still, from London's point of view, a series of other recent Chinese actions suggest an ever more confident Beijing is waxing indifferent to Britain's strategic aim of "increasing understanding of human rights issues on both sides", whatever it may have promised before the 2008 Olympics.

China's continuing persecution of signatories of the pro-democracy Charter '08, which calls for greater respect for personal and civic freedoms, reached a new low last month when the charter's author, Liu Xiaobo, was jailed for 11 years for allegedly "inciting subversion of state power". The sentence produced a torrent of protest, including an open letter to President Hu Jintao from the ex-dissident and former Czech president Vaclav Havel and other signatories of former Czechoslovakia's Charter '77.

According to the Free Tibet campaign, meanwhile, arrests, harassment and torture of indigenous Tibetans opposed to direct rule by Beijing have intensified since the 2008 protests in Lhasa. In a new campaign launched today, actors Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman have made recordings of the testimonies of torture victims.

One torture victim, Pema, whose story is told by David Threlfall, tells how he was seized by police in his home on 17 March 2008 and beaten and abused with an electric baton. Pema goes on to relate how he and more than one hundred other Tibetans were held in confined conditions and how he was stabbed and burned with cigarettes during interrogations.

In a statement in October 2008, foreign secretary David Miliband said Britain was "deeply concerned" about the human rights situation in Tibet. "No government which is committed to promoting international respect for human rights can remain silent on the issue of Tibet."

Asked today what was being done now, a Foreign Office spokesman said Britain "repeatedly" raised Tibet in meetings with Chinese officials, notably during a ministerial visit to Lhasa and Beijing last September, and was urging China to resume a dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama. The spokesman said the case of Liu Xiaobo's jailing had also been raised bilaterally and though an EU statement on 28 December that expressed "deep concern" about his treatment.

Human rights aside, rising Sino-British tensions are also being fed by issues such as Beijing's reluctance to support new sanctions on Iran's nuclear programme; and by the public spat in Copenhagen last month when Brown and other ministers publicly blamed China for blocking Britain's climate change agenda. But according to China expert and author Jonathan Fenby, Britain is on a losing wicket in its battles with Beijing.

"China has asserted its determination to protect its own sovereignty whatever the issue, and is intent on doing things its way," Fenby wrote on Cif last month. "Given its economic progress ... the leadership and the population feel pretty good about themselves. They are in no mood to take lessons, moral or otherwise, from the west."