The British leader’s trip to China comes after several weeks of tension with Trump.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in China on Jan. 28 for a three-day visit, a week after his government approved plans for a controversial new Chinese embassy in London.
Starmer, who is traveling with more than 50 representatives of UK businesses, will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Jan. 29, before talks in Shanghai with local officials on Jan. 30.
“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 aboard the plane to Beijing. “It’s going to be a really important trip for us, and we’ll make some real progress.”
The most recent meeting between a British prime minister and Xi was in 2018, when Theresa May visited Beijing.
Starmer said he believes he can improve trade ties with China without harming the UK’s relationship with the United States.
“The relationship we have with the U.S. is one of the closest relationships we hold, on defense, security, intelligence, and also on trade and lots of areas,” Starmer told reporters.
Writing in an opinion piece published in The Times of London on Jan. 27, China’s ambassador to the UK, Zheng Zeguang, said the UK and China should “seek common ground while managing differences.”
“It is a fact that China and the UK do not see eye-to-eye on every issue,” Zheng wrote. “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.”
China is the world’s second-largest economy and a major trading partner for the UK, but there has been a shift in the relationship in recent years amid a growing awareness of the security threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
