\n PM’s visit is eight years in the making – but what have previous relations with China looked like?\n <\/p>\n
Sir Keir Starmer is expected to touch down in Beijing within the next couple of hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He will be the first serving UK prime minister to step foot in China in eight years, as he seeks to thaw relations between the two countries.<\/p>\n
It follows the so-called “Golden Era” of relations between the two nations, which saw Chinese President Xi Jinping come to the UK for a state visit, and sip pints with then PM David Cameron in October 2015.<\/p>\n
Now more than a decade ago, that visit saw the Chinese leader meet with Queen Elizabeth II, attend a state dinner, visit Manchester City FC and launch new flights between the two countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three years later, in 2018, Cameron’s successor, Theresa May jetted off to China for a three-day trip.<\/p>\n
May met with Xi Jingping, discussed expanding trade links and discussed their shared commitment to protecting the environment and tackling illegal wildlife trades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other topics that came up on the visit included North Korea, both countries’ “commitment to ‘One Country, Two Systems'” in Hong Kong and “the importance of the Rules-Based International System”, according to May’s Number 10.<\/p>\n
But two years later, China imposed the National Security Law on Hong Kong, which has seen pro-democracy activist and British citizen Jimmy Lai jailed, while fears about Chinese spying have soared.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the past eight years since May’s visit, relations between China and the UK have repeatedly pivoted, but largely soured.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It should be noted that while no PM has visited for a while, Sir Keir Starmer has met with his counterpart more recently.<\/p>\n
The two leaders met at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024, where they held a bilateral meeting.<\/p>\n
Much more recently, Chancellor Rachel Reeves held a meeting with China’s vice premier and finance minister He Lifeng, while at Davos last week – as revealed by this one photo posted by the Treasury online.<\/p>\n
Starmer will be abroad for five days in total, travelling to two Chinese cities as well as stopping off in Tokyo for a meeting with his Japanese counterpart.<\/p>\n
Of course, we’ll bring you all the latest from his visit – right here on the Politics Hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PM’s visit is eight years in the making – but what have previous relations with China looked like?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-394697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}