Accompanied by around 60 British business and cultural leaders, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for an official visit to China through Saturday.
Addressing business delegates in the lobby of their hotel in Beijing, Starmer was quoted by BBC as saying that “on this delegation, you’re making history. You’re part of the change that we’re bringing about.”
Starmer continued that “We are resolute about being outward-looking, about taking opportunities, about building relationships … and always being absolutely focused on our national interest.”
“I hope we can make some progress, but I’m not going to get ahead of myself,” he said when asked if he would strike a visa-free deal this week, according to Bloomberg.
Starmer’s visit comes after a string of trips to China by several Western leaders this month. Chinese experts said the surge reflects a desire to deepen cooperation with Beijing and seek stability amid a turbulent global landscape. The experts have also downplayed some Western media’s portrayals of the trend as a “pivot to China,” arguing instead that it represents an effort by those countries to pursue horizontal cooperation to protect their own interests.
Asked about expectations for Starmer’s visit to China and his scheduled meeting with Chinese leaders tomorrow, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Wednesday that the international landscape is witnessing turbulence and transformation. It serves the common interest of both peoples and contributes to global peace, stability and development for China and the UK, as two permanent members of the UN Security Council, to maintain communication and enhance cooperation.
Guo noted that Prime Minister Starmer’s visit marks the first visit to China by a UK prime minister in eight years. During the visit, Chinese leaders will meet and have talks with him for in-depth exchanges of views on bilateral relations and issues of mutual interest. Prime Minister Starmer will also visit Shanghai.
China stands ready to take this visit as an opportunity to enhance political mutual trust with the UK, deepen practical cooperation, open a new chapter of sound and steady development of China-UK relationship and together make due efforts and contributions to world peace, security, and stability, Guo said.
Engage in dialogue, co-op
Starmer posted on X after landing in China, saying, “Touched down in China – I’m here to deliver for the British people.”
The key focus of Starmer’s visit to China is that the UK wants to step up bilateral contact, a stance that he has made really clear since taking office, British Ambassador to China Peter Wilson told the Global Times during a press briefing on Tuesday.
For two countries whose economies both play important roles at the UN on the global stage, “not to be talking more is a problem,” the British ambassador said, adding that anything that gets in the way of that conversation is bad. Anything that steps up that contact and that conversation is good.
Wilson said that this visit will cover three main themes, including economic cooperation, security relationship and global issues such as climate change.
British companies see strong prospects for future activity with the China market, highlighting a score of cooperation sectors where businesses from the two sides are highly complementary, Tom Simpson, managing director of China Operations and China chief representative of the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC), told the Global Times in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.
China, the world’s second-largest economy, is a market into which British companies have been investing for many decades, with a large consumer base and significant growth potential, particularly in trade in services, Simpson said.
In an article published in British newspaper The Times, Chinese Ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang wrote that it is a fact that China and the UK do not see eye to eye on every issue. Some of the differences arise from our different political systems and historical and cultural backgrounds; others from divergent practical interests; and many more from a lack of engagement and mutual understanding, which can make otherwise normal issues more complicated.
The right approach to addressing these differences is to engage in rational dialogue, and look for solutions in the spirit of mutual respect and pragmatism. To this end, we should encourage more people-to-people exchanges, and even more so, strengthen regular high-level contacts, Zheng noted.
The British public may also be starting to mellow on China. A poll by YouGov this month found that 27 percent of Britons view China as a “friend and ally,” or a “friendly rival” – up from 19 percent in October, according to BBC.
Meanwhile, trust in the US is cratering. YouGov found that about as many Britons (23 percent) see the US as a major threat to Britain as they do China (25 percent), following Trump’s recent threats against Greenland.
In an interview with Bloomberg ahead of the visit, Starmer said that the UK would not have to choose between the US and China. He also dismissed questions about whether he was seeking stronger ties with China at the expense of the UK’s relationship with its closest allies, Bloomberg said.
The prime minister was very clear about that, so we are not choosing and we are engaging around the world, Wilson said in response to a question about how to balance relations with different countries.
Seek stability
Before Starmer’s trip, the visits to China paid by a slew of Western leaders in January, including Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, have attracted wide attention from Western media, and some have interpreted the trend as close US allies are “pivoting to China.”
An article titled “A year into Trump presidency, ‘pivot to China’ gathers pace,” published by Reuters on Wednesday, said that “when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer lands in China on Wednesday evening hoping to reinvigorate recently strained business ties, analysts and experts say Beijing is expected to further expand its global political and economic influence.”
“I think China has done a good job and rightly so to position itself as the reliable and stable trade partner,” Reuters quoted Derrick Irwin, co-head of intrinsic emerging markets equity at Allspring Global Investments, as saying.
“After [US] President Donald Trump’s diplomatic demolition act at Davos last week, the UK prime minister is aiming to repair strained relations with Beijing while also working with EU leaders to strengthen military and economic ties,” the Financial Times wrote ahead of the visit.
An article in the Wall Street Journal adopted a similar tone, noting that “US trading partners, feeling burned by an unpredictable and transactional White House, are reassessing China in a drive to lessen their longstanding reliance on America.”
A spate of recent visits to China by longtime US allies reflects a pragmatic recalibration of Western policy toward Beijing, Cui Hongjian, a professor at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times.
He noted that not only have some European governments come to more clearly recognize the importance of engaging China through practical cooperation, at the same time, amid rapid shifts in the global landscape, they are looking to China as a source of stability and predictability.
Yet Cui dismissed Western media’s interpretation of the trend as a pivot from the US to China, calling the interpretation a deliberate creation of antagonism between Beijing and Washington. The shift in transatlantic relations does not amount to a rupture with Washington or a wholesale pivot toward Beijing, Cui said, citing the example of Carney’s remarks on Davos recently, that when the US is weakening the very foundations of the international order it once led, other Western countries are increasingly resistant to being neatly divided into camps or coerced into alignment. Rather, they are more inclined to pursue horizontal cooperation to safeguard their interests and preserve elements of the existing global order.
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