Powell and Starmer in Beijing

Taiwan unnamed in US defence strategy; further Chinese-Russian military cooperation

Observing China is the essential newsletter to understand the UK-PRC relationship, explained in the context of global developments.

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How many British businesspeople does it take to get Beijing to invest in the United Kingdom (UK)? The correct answer is a Prime Minister bearing a gifted football and around 50 business executives. And even then, it seems Britain may have given more than it got.

The visit of Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), concludes tomorrow. Among his delegation is Jonathan Powell, National Security Adviser, who met with Wang Yi, Foreign Minister of the PRC, on Wednesday.

The two sides signed an agreement on services trade, which ‘aim to help grow the £13 billion-worth of services sold by UK firms to China annually.’ This is not an insignificant amount. But what of the other sectors? At the time of writing, it appears that much of the quantified investment is, yet again, outbound. For pharmaceuticals, Sir Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of AstraZeneca – Britain’s most valuable publicly listed company – announced an investment of CN¥100 billion (£10.4 billion) in the PRC by 2030.

The series of agreements also saw Beijing’s agreement to halve whisky tariffs to 5%, as well as visa-free travel for British citizens for up to 30 days in the PRC. On more cooperative matters, the two sides agreed to share intelligence on people-smuggling in the English Channel.

Elsewhere around the world, the United States (US) unveiled its new National Defence Strategy (NDS). Taiwan was not mentioned explicitly in the latest NDS, but it was in the previous one, in 2022.

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