Risking Trump’s Ire, Britain’s Starmer To Visit Beijing in Search of Warmer Ties with President Xi

Britain’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, this week joins the parade of world leaders kowtowing before Communist China’s President Xi Jinping in hopes of reaching deals on trade and investment that risk incurring the wrath of President Trump.Mr. Starmer, following in the footsteps of Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who visited Beijing earlier this month, is bringing along a trade delegation that’s well aware of Mr. Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on Canadian imports in retaliation for Mr. Carney’s agreeing on a tariff of only 6.1 percent on Chinese electric vehicles.On the first visit by a British prime minister to Beijing since 2018, Mr. Starmer hopes to repair relations frayed by a decline in exports and a widening trade deficit on top of claims of Chinese espionage. China has deepened suspicions with plans for building a controversial mega-embassy in London that Mr. Starmer finally approved as an implicit condition for Mr. Xi welcoming him to Beijing.A researcher at London’s influential Chatham House, Tahlia Peterson, cites “speculation that the decision may have been designed to win favour with Beijing ahead of the visit” amid “broader concerns that the new embassy could facilitate espionage, foreign interference or other hostile activities targeting the UK and Europe.”While patching up relations with China, Mr. Starmer has upset Mr. Trump by adamantly opposing his call for America to take over Greenland, insisting that any decision is up to the people of Greenland and Denmark, which has sovereignty over the self-governing territory. He also denounced Mr. Trump’s remark that British troops in Afghanistan had “stayed a little back, a little off the front line” as “frankly appalling.”Mr. Trump later sought to make amends by calling British forces “among the greatest of all warriors,” but his policies on America’s NATO alliance and on defense against China raise questions about America’s commitment. The undersecretary for defense, Elbridge Colby, contributed to the doubts in Seoul, on his first trip abroad in that position, when he called for America’s “allies “to expand their roles and burden-sharing” — hinting America might scale back its 28,500 troops in Korea and 50,000 in Japan.Now Mr. Trump has raised further doubts by announcing a 25 percent tariff on imports from South Korea, up from 15 percent. He says South Korea has yet to fulfil its end of the deal — a promise to invest $350 billion in industry in America. “Whereas the U.S. once provided everything for free, it will now adjust support based on allies’ contributions,” a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, Yang Uk, told Seoul’s leading newspaper, Chosun Ilbo. “This reiterates that U.S. security packages have effectively become a ‘subscription service.’”Adding to doubts about whatever Mr. Colby had in mind, he visited South Korea after the South’s president, Lee Jae-myung, had gone to Beijing for a summit with Mr. Xi. “Seoul and Beijing are back on track in reviving their bilateral ties,” said a regional magazine, The Diplomat, published in Washington. “China-South Korea relations will continue to gain momentum in the coming months.”In London as in Seoul, however, China’s increasing influence has inspired severe rebukes.“China hacked Downing Street phones for years,” headlines Britain’s Daily Telegraph, referring to the office home of British prime ministers at 10 Downing Street. The paper reports a “global operation by Chinese state-sponsored hackers to gain access to the phones of millions of people, track specific targets and record their calls.”The Chinese were delighted by an interview in which Mr. Starmer told Bloomberg, “Just sticking your head in the sand and ignoring China when it’s the second-biggest economy in the world and there are business opportunities, wouldn’t be sensible.”Leaping on those remarks, China’s Global Times, an offshoot of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, said “Chinese experts” saw Mr. Starmer reflecting “a pragmatic choice, as London increasingly recognizes China’s growing weight in the global economy, noting that recent US tariff threats underscore the limits of traditional alliances.”

Risking Trump’s Ire, Britain’s Starmer To Visit Beijing in Search of Warmer Ties with President Xi

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