British Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday arrived in Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), hoping to restore long fraught relations.
It is the first visit to China by a British prime minister since 2018 and follows a string of Western leaders courting Beijing in the past few weeks, pivoting from a mercurial US.
Starmer, who is also expected to visit Shanghai tomorrow, would later make a brief stop in Japan to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Photo: Reuters
For Xi, the trip is an opportunity to show Beijing can be a reliable partner at a time when US President Donald Trump’s policies have rattled historic ties between Washington and its Western allies.
Starmer is battling record-low popularity polls and hopes the visit can boost the UK’s beleaguered economy.
The trip has been lauded by Downing Street as a chance to boost trade and investment ties while raising thorny issues such as national security and human rights.
Starmer is today to meet with Xi for lunch, followed by a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強).
The British leader said the visit to China was “going to be a really important trip for us,” vowing to make “some real progress.”
There are “opportunities” to deepen bilateral relations, Starmer told reporters traveling with him on the plane to China.
“It doesn’t make sense to stick our head in the ground and bury in the sand when it comes to China; it’s in our interests to engage and not compromise on national security,” he added.
China, for its part, “is willing to take this visit as an opportunity to enhance political mutual trust,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) told a news conference.
Starmer is the latest Western leader to be hosted by Beijing in the past few months, following visits by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Faced with Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Canada for signing a trade agreement with China, and the US president’s attempts to create a new international institution with his “Board of Peace,” Beijing has been affirming its support for the UN to visiting leaders.
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