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Sir Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, is scheduled to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping during the G20 summit this week. The British government hopes to establish “stable and pragmatic engagement” with China, focusing on international stability, climate change, and economic growth. However, Downing Street emphasized that engaging with China would be “rooted at all times in the UK’s national interests” and that discussions would be open and frank about areas of disagreement.
Sir Keir stated that shoring up support for Ukraine was his top priority when speaking with reporters en route to Rio de Janeiro for the meeting. The meeting between Sir Keir and Xi is the first time a UK Prime Minister has met with the Chinese President in person since 2018. The pair spoke over the phone in August, immediately after Labour’s election victory the previous month, but they have not met in person.
The UK and other Western countries have criticized China’s military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister stressed the importance of engaging with other countries to build strong and fruitful partnerships, including those with different values from the UK’s. Such cooperation would be crucial to securing global investments that would catalyze growth and thus create much-needed jobs.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as well as Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, in Beijing last month. The UK’s last Prime Minister to meet President Xi was Theresa May during her 2018 trip to China, which she referred to as a “golden era” for UK-China relations. But since then, the two countries have had tensions over various issues, including China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority group in Xinjiang and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
During the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Prime Minister will concentrate on various key areas such as building partnerships that increase economic growth and security, accelerating climate transition and the use of clean power, and supporting the economic growth of developing countries
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