Britain revives Chinese ties after Trump victory

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — The handshake between Keir Starmer and Xi Jinping may have been a brief and awkward grip, but both men are banking on it ushering in a long thaw in frosty relations.
Four prime ministers have been ousted since the last meeting between a British premier and the Chinese president. Six years on, Starmer’s courting of a “pragmatic” relationship with Xi was the main event of his visit to the G20 in Brazil’s capital this week.
Sino-British relations have severely soured since then-Prime Minister David Cameron declared a “golden era” in 2015, and his Chancellor George Osborne went out of his way to court Chinese business. Matters became strained under Theresa May — the last British leader to meet Xi — and really hit the doldrums on Boris Johnson’s watch between 2019 and 2022.
Now with a new Labour government having ejected the Conservatives in July after 14 years in power, Starmer is looking to Beijing to help overturn Britain’s sluggish economic growth.
A senior British official, granted anonymity along with others in this article so they could speak candidly, said re-engagement was a “no-brainer.”
They pointed to Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House and threats of a trade war with Beijing which could roil both Britain and China’s prosperity. A renewed friendship between London and Beijing could benefit both sides.
But, the official insisted: “This isn’t a return to the golden era. China has changed and we’ve changed — Xi wasn’t ‘president for life’ back then,” a reference to the premier’s increasingly authoritarian direction of travel.
At the top of the ice-breaker of a meeting Monday Starmer said he’d like to visit Beijing and spoke of his desire to build a “consistent, durable, respectful” relationship.
British advisers in the meeting had to stifle laughs when Xi repeated Starmer’s ubiquitous campaign slogan of needing to “fix the foundations of the economy.” The Chinese had been doing their homework.
But then the PM brought up human rights, and the equally thorny topics of Taiwan, Chinese sanctions on British parliamentarians and the case of Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy campaigner currently on trial in Hong Kong. Starmer said he was “concerned” to hear of “deterioration” in the condition of the media mogul, who is a British national.
“I can assure you George Osborne never did that,” the official said of Starmer raising human rights concerns. The former chancellor was indeed so focused on the golden relationship he was once praised by Chinese state media for his lack of focus on human rights concerns.
It was surely no coincidence that Chinese officials chose the moment Starmer strayed onto matters unpalatable to Beijing to strike.
The cameras were rolling as Chinese staffers aggressively bundled two British pool reporters out of the room.
Despite the fracas that alarmed British officials, Starmer later said he was happy with the meeting and the opportunities he anticipated it would bring, although, as one senior adviser put it, the “softly spoken” Xi is “hard to read.”
The following day, the PM refused to publicly criticize the jailing of 45 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong under contentious national security laws imposed by Beijing.
Asked at his end-of-G20 press conference if he would condemn the mass imprisonments or bite his tongue to win closer ties with China, Starmer opted to tread a diplomatic tightrope.
“Well, we want that close economic partnership,” he said. Sure, there would be “differences” between London and Beijing, he went on, but Starmer was clear where his priority lay: U.K. prosperity, and the boost to growth which China can potentially fuel.
Observers will continue to closely to watch Starmer’s response to such questions, as they will not be going away. Lai testified for the first time in court Wednesday, when he defiantly denied colluding with overseas contacts to influence foreign policy on Hong Kong. If convicted, he could be jailed for life.
Xi’s ever tightening grip on power was not the only factor in the move to frostier relations with Britain — during his first iteration in the White House, Trump played a large role, with an eventually successful demand for Boris Johnson to strip the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei from the U.K.’s 5G network on national security grounds.
In the years that followed, British politicians, particularly from the then-ruling Conservative parties, highlighted a growing list of concerns, including the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, repression in the former British colony of Hong Kong, sanctioned parliamentarians, and allegations of a mass hacking of the Ministry of Defence’s payroll and Britain’s electoral rolls made by Rishi Sunak when he was in power. 
Starmer may face less pressure from his own MPs to take a tough line on China than his Conservative predecessors did. The Tories tend to be more Sino-skeptic, plus Labour won such a large majority in July’s general election that Starmer has little to worry about when it comes to backbench rebellion.
More pressing difficulty could come from Trump again. The U.S. president elect has threatened to impose 60 percent tariffs on imports to the U.S. from his nemesis China, along with 20 percent on goods from the rest of the world.
Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has said Britain would be “much more exposed” to a potential U.S.-China trade war under a second Trump presidency. It would be a “painful proposition for the U.K.,” he told a parliamentary committee Monday.
In the event Trump mounts an extreme trade war against China, U.K. exports could drop by £8.4 billion, with Britain’s manufacturing sector most at risk, according to a recent analysis by Allianz Trade.
The Labour government has signaled a desire to reopen two key trade and financial dialogues to discuss financial and trade barriers with China, pointing to increased U.S. engagement with Beijing under the administration of Joe Biden as a model.
One senior business representative who has dealings in China reckoned Starmer might be able to tough out another Trump term in which the president demands “you’re either with us or against us.”
“Maybe it’s easier for the Labour Party to say ‘No, we’re not going to do that’ and then just grit their teeth for four years,” they said.
In a flurry of overtures to China in the first four months of the Labour government, Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Beijing and Shanghai last month, paving the way for the Xi-Starmer meeting. 
But the Foreign Office is also conducting a “China audit,” a review of London’s relationship with Beijing. Two people contributing believe Lammy wants it completed close to the start of 2025. That would pave the way for Chancellor Rachel Reeves to visit, likely in January. The next move would be a high-profile trip by Starmer later in the year. 
Regardless of the audit’s conclusions, Starmer will inevitably be forced into a more open stance towards China by the need to deliver on his key domestic missions, including boosting the U.K.’s growth and ambitious decarbonization targets.
Reynolds and Reeves are both eyeing China as they try to spur on more international investment in the U.K. 
Ruby Osman, a China policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute, described Labour as “just that bit more comfortable with the high-level political dialogue that was missing towards the end of the previous government.”
“It was becoming obvious that the UK was really falling behind some of our key partners,” she added. “The U.S. is far tougher on China, but they also have far more dialogue, far more engagement — Australia, France, Germany, Japan, pretty much you name it, have had head of state level meetings.”
Now Britain is playing catch up.
Allie Renison, a former policy adviser to then-Conservative Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, warned Britain was “considerably exposed to any trade wars” because of deep ties to international markets. 
Renison, now an associate director at the SEC Newgate UK consultancy, said Britain had leverage to respond because it remained the leading European destination for Chinese investment.
However, the relationship is further complicated by post-Brexit Britain trying to get closer to the EU again under Starmer.
Trump may try to strong-arm Britain away from China and into closer economic security alignment with the U.S. with a reduction of tariffs, but Beijing is “just as willing to play politics with trade as Trump is,” Renison said.
“In the end, it may be more of an economic choice between the U.S. and China for the government than Washington or Brussels, and the political implications of navigating that are considerable,” she added.
Blewett reported from Rio. Lanktree and Webber reported from London.