Chinese President Xi Jinping (3-L) meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (2-R) on Thursday in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. It was first visit to China by a British leader in eight years. Photo by Vincent Thian/EPA
Jan. 29 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer emerged from a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday to pronounce that ties between the two countries were back on track, with progress made on trade, tourism and business travel and disrupting illegal migration.
Speaking to reporters after his 80-minute meeting with Xi in the Great Hall of the People, the first by any British leader in eight years, Starmer said it was “very good, productive session with concrete outcomes” that represented a substantive advance.
“It was a real strengthening of the relationship and that’s in the national interest because, of course, there are huge opportunities here in China. A lot of the discussion was about how we open up access for those opportunities, focusing, as I always do, on how this is going to be delivered back in the United Kingdom, how does it benefit people back at home,” he said.
Starmer said headway had been made on Scottish whisky tariffs, visa-free travel to China for Britons and a border security deal on deporting illegal immigrants from Britain, tackling Chinese gangs producing synthetic opioids, and cutting off the flow of Chinese-made marine engines used by people smugglers moving migrants across the English Channel in small boats.
Starmer’s meeting with Xi ran for more than double the period of time scheduled for the talks.
Downing Street later confirmed British citizens would be permitted visits for tourism or business purposes of up to 30 days without a visa.
On issues where they did not see eye to eye, the two sides agreed to “maintain frank and open dialogue,” according to the readout from No. 10.
Starmer insisted he raised human rights at the meeting, including the treatment of the Uyghur minority in China and media mogul and democracy activist Jimmy Lai, a British citizen who has been in prison in Hong Kong since 2020 on sedition and other charges.
He said they had a “respectful discussion” and that his Chinese hosts had listened, with Starmer pointing out that the opportunity to raise “issues we disagree on” was part of the rationale for engagement.
Praising the contributions of past Labour governments to building Sino-British ties, Xi said that China stood ready to move beyond the “twist and turns” to develop a “long-term relationship” with Britain and “consistent, comprehensive, strategic partnership” that would benefit both peoples and the wider world.
However, no major deal or breakthrough came out of the meeting with the only agreement thus far a $20.7 billion investment in China through 2030 by U.K. pharma-giant AstraZeneca to expand its Chinese operation, particularly its work on anti-cancer cell therapy.
The Conservatives’ shadow national security minister, Alicia Kearns, who had urged Starmer to make the release of Lai and the lifting of sanctions on British MPs a condition of his visit, doubled down on her criticism.
“Keir Starmer’s visit tells the Chinese Communist Party they can carry on just as they are,” she wrote on X.
