UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer touched down in Beijing with a business delegation on Wednesday for a three-day visit, the first by a British leader in nearly eight years.
Starmer is seeking to strengthen political and business ties between the United Kingdom and China as relations between the United States and its allies become increasingly strained under Donald Trump.
Criticized by some opponents in the United Kingdom for not taking a hard enough line on China, Starmer said the UK must remain vigilant on security threats but could not afford to ignore the world’s second-largest economy.
“It doesn’t make sense to stick our head in the ground and bury it in the sand when it comes to China: It’s in our interests to engage,” Starmer told reporters on the flight to China. “It’s going to be a really important trip for us, and we’ll make some real progress.”
Xi to Starmer: China, UK must strengthen ties
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Starmer that the countries must work together on global stability, climate change and other issues.
“I have long been clear that the UK and China need a long-term, consistent and comprehensive strategic partnership,” he said.
Xi said China’s relationship with the United Kingdom had been through “twists and turns” that did not serve the interests of either country.
The Chinese president called for the countries to fortify relations to counter geopolitical challenges.
“The current international situation is complex and intertwined. As permanent members of the UN Security Council and major global economies, China and the UK need to strengthen dialogue and cooperation,” Xi said.
Starmer, of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, was scheduled to meet Premier Li Qiang later Thursday.
On Friday, Starmer and a delegation of roughly 60 representatives from business, sport and culture move on to China’s financial capital, Shanghai, for talks with executives.
China courts US allies during Trump upheaval
After several years, primarily during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, when China’s government made and requested very few foreign visits, Beijing has extended invitations to a string of international leaders in recent months.
Delegations from France, South Korea, Ireland and Finland all visited China over the winter.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was there just days before he raised international eyebrows withhis pointed speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos and its not-so-thinly veiled jabs at Trump. Trump subsequently threatened exorbitant tariffs on Canada if Carney goes ahead with a bilateral accord brokered on his visit, albeit only in one of his many, often exaggerated social media posts.
At the end of February, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is scheduled to take his own turn to fly to Beijing.
This flurry of diplomacy comes after China and the United States had a tariff and trade spat of their own last year — with Beijing securing a US climbdown fairly quickly — and ahead of Trump’s own planned trip to China, scheduled for early April.
Sticking points
The recent move to build a new massive Chinese Embassy in London had prompted criticism of Starmer’s government back home.
Beyond that, the continued repression of freedoms in Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997, could prove a sticking point. However, Starmer refused to be drawn in on whether he would raise the recent conviction of media tycoon Jimmy Lai or other legal and democractic issues during his visit.
Starmer sought to downplay notions that the China visit could endanger Britain’s ties with the United States, and the idea Carney raised in Davos about the importance of “middle powers” stepping up more to counter the influence of major powers in the world.
“I’m a pragmatist, a British pragmatist applying common sense,” said Starmer the first prime minister to visit China since Theresa May in 2018.
Edited by: Sean Sinico, Louis Oelofse