Britain’s Starmer, China’s Xi Talk up ‘Strategic Partnership’ in First UK-China Summit in Eight Years

The prime minister of Great Britain, Keir Starmer, is winding up a mission to see China’s president, Xi Jinping, that’s long on rhetoric about their new “strategic partnership” but short on firm deal-making. The best chances may lie in a post-summit sortie to the financial and industrial center of Shanghai, to which Mr. Starmer has led 60 of his country’s business leaders and experts. They’re looking for contacts to redress a trade deficit that rose to $58 billion between June 2024 and June 2025, up 18 percent year-on-year.After an 80-minute session with Mr. Xi and then a lavish luncheon in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, the most substantive news that Mr. Starmer could impart, live on BBC, was “really good progress on tariffs on whiskey” and maybe “visa free travel to China” for British passport holders. He wasn’t specific, though, saying “we’re looking at” how the whiskey tariffs could go down from the current level of 10 percent to maybe 5 percent. As for Brits getting into China sans visas, he cited “progress” on “how far, how much and when” it would happen. The first British prime minister to go to China in eight years, Mr. Starmer was the latest in a cavalcade of heads of state bowing and scraping before Mr. Xi partly to get out from under American tariffs and show their independence from the NATO alliance at a time when Mr. Trump has upset them with his claims to Greenland.Recent visitors include France’s President Emanuel Macron and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who denied Canada was pursuing a “free trade” agreement with China after Mr. Trump threatened 100 percent tariffs on Canadian products in retaliation for Canada slashing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Korea’s president, Lee Jae-myung, also called on Mr. Xi, hoping to get him to pressure North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un to stop ignoring him and also to talk to President Trump, who still regards him as a bosom buddy after their three meetings in 2018 and 2019. While Mr. Trump may look suspiciously on improved British relations with China, Mr. Starmer’s talk with Mr. Xi did not give Americans much to worry about. For Britain, the most promising portent of what the two agreed would be “a long-term, stable comprehensive strategic partnership” was that the pharmaceutical giant, Astro-Zeneca, would invest $15 billion in a new plant in China in which it’s already agreed to invest $2.5 billion.The Financial Times also reported that China and Britain would conduct a “feasibility study” that, “if ever realized,” promises “a big boost to UK financial and business services firms.”Mr. Xi called on “the two countries to transcend differences and maintain mutual respect,” according to China’s state news agency, Xinhua, so “they can translate the promising potential of cooperation into remarkable accomplishments, and open up new vistas for China-Britain relations and cooperation.”As reported by Xinhua, Mr. Xi stuck to generalities that might — or might not — point to future agreements. “The two countries should expand mutually beneficial cooperation in education, health, finance and the service industry,” he said, while hoping “the British side will provide an equal, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises.” Irritants remained, however. Mr. Starmer did not overlook the travail of the Hong Kong tycoon, Jimmy Lai, imprisoned and facing a severe sentence for opposing harsh Chinese restraints on free speech in Hong Kong. A spokesman said Mr. Starmer “raised China’s record on human rights and the jailing of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong tycoon and pro-democracy activist,” said the Financial Times, “but repeatedly declined to give any details of what he said.”

Britain’s Starmer, China’s Xi Talk up ‘Strategic Partnership’ in First UK-China Summit in Eight Years

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