Keir Starmer will today become the first prime minister in six years to meet with Xi Jinping. The Labour leader is due to meet with the Chinese president at the G20 summit in Brazil as Starmer’s government attempts a wider reset of UK/China relations. This is being pitched by Downing Street as a move to ‘stable and pragmatic engagement’ with Beijing following a cooling of relations in recent years. The last prime minister to meet with Xi was Theresa May in 2018 who hailed a ‘golden era of UK-China relations’. Since then, however, allegations of espionage, human rights abuses, the national security law in Hong Kong and the pandemic have seen relations sour.
The Prime Minister has said his focus at the summit is Ukraine – so China’s military support for Russia could be a topic of conversation. However, Starmer is trying to pitch this as more constructive than a meeting to simply give Beijing a ticking off. Speaking ahead of the summit Starmer said:
I am planning to have a bilateral with President Xi at the G20. I think that’s important. We are both global players, global powers, both permanent members of the Security Council and of the G20. China’s economy is obviously the second biggest in the world. It’s one of our biggest trading partners and therefore I will be having serious pragmatic discussions with the president when I meet him.
Starmer will say that there are ‘areas of mutual cooperation’ for the UK and China such as on international stability, climate change and economic growth. It’s the latter that might best explain the recent pivot which has seen the Foreign Secretary visit and the Chancellor expected to travel to Beijing in the new year. As I first reported last month in a cover piece for The Spectator, two of Starmer’s five government missions mean Labour is looking afresh at what Beijing has to offer. First, for a government with growth as its central goal, the Chinese market is alluring. When money is tight, the world’s second-largest economy looks like a more appealing place to turn. China has plenty to invest. Second, Labour has pledged clean electricity by 2030. If Miliband is to have any chance of reaching that goal, China will be key. The country produces 86 per cent of the world’s solar panels – some of which have been linked to forced labour.
However, complicating matters is the return of Donald Trump to the White House. While neither Trump nor his Democrat opponent were seen as good options in China (one academic described them as ‘two bowls of poison’), Trump is likely to take a more hardline stance than the Biden administration. That means that the UK could find itself under pressure to reconsider closer ties with China when it comes to the UK position on Chinese EV cars, solar panels and the potential listing of Shein, the Chinese fast fashion company, on the London Stock Exchange.
Labour is not as hostile towards China as the Tories were
Trump has nominated Marco Rubio, a well-established China hawk, for secretary of state. Allies of Rubio say that he viewed the Biden administration approach to China as too conciliatory and takes the view that Beijing is effectively an enemy of the United States. Notably, Rubio sent then chancellor Jeremy Hunt a letter this year citing various reported human rights abuses by Shein. Once in government, Rubio’s warnings about the listing of the £50 billion IPO could hold even greater sway. Ministers could also come under pressure over the Chagos islands deal – the decision to give up sovereignty. Nigel Farage is pushing for new Trump administration to tear it up on the grounds it is a coup for Chinese interests.
Then there’s the domestic audience. In recent years, the Tory party became so hawkish on China that a Conservative prime minister would have struggled to soften relations even if they wanted to. Boris Johnson ended up reversing the Huawei position on 5G as a result of a mix of US pressure and complaints from backbenchers. The new parliamentary Labour party is a different beast – there is not the same hostility. However, there is an awareness that if the government looks as though it is turning a blind eye to human rights abuses for financial gain, it could sit badly with the party.
It means even if today’s meeting goes to plan, there are still plenty of challenges facing Starmer if he is to reset relations with China.
Comments