The meeting, held at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, lasted approximately 20 minutes.

During this brief but significant engagement, Prime Minister Starmer emphasised the importance of a “strong UK-China relationship” for the benefit of both nations and the broader international community, calling for relations to be “consistent, durable, and respectful.”

“The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law,” said PM Starmer. 

A UK government press release stated that Prime Minister Starmer underscored the need for China and the UK to collaborate in supporting global stability, fostering economic cooperation, and advancing the global clean energy transition. He underscored that much more must be done to achieve net zero, with both nations playing a vital role in this effort.

During the discussion, the Prime Minister proposed a visit to Beijing or London for a full bilateral meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang. He also suggested that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves meet her counterpart, Minister He Lifeng, early in the new year to “explore more investment projects and a more level playing field to help our businesses.”

A readout from Xinhua quoted PM Starmer as noting that China and the UK share “extensive common interests” and “bear important responsibilities in solving global challenges and maintaining world peace and development.” The UK, he stated, seeks to deepen cooperation with China in areas such as “economy and trade, science and technology, finance, healthcare, education, and climate change.”

PM Starmer also raised sensitive issues, including human rights, Taiwan, parliamentary sanctions, and the case of Jimmy Lai.

Xinhua’s coverage highlighted President Xi’s comments to PM Starmer, in which he stressed that the UK and China have significant roles to play in advancing their respective nations while addressing global challenges. President Xi called for both nations to remain strategic partners, pursue open cooperation, and maintain healthy and stable relations.

Despite their differences, President Xi remarked that the UK and China have “broad space for cooperation” and should work together to “promote political solutions to pressing issues, strengthen global governance of artificial intelligence, and contribute to world economic growth and shared development among nations.”

UK-China relations have seen steady improvement since Labour’s rise to power in June. PM Starmer and President Xi had their first phone call in August, followed by Foreign Minister David Lammy’s visit to Beijing in October. During that trip, Lammy met with key Chinese political leaders, including Premier Li Qiang, and engaged with UK businesses, including the China-Britain Business Council.

Chancellor Reeves is scheduled to visit Beijing early next year to hold the first UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue since 2019.

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The visit of David Cameron and Xi Jinping to the Plough Inn at Cadsden, Buckinghamshire in 2015 has come to be seen as the defining moment of the ‘Golden Era’ of UK-China relations. The scene suggests a sense of normality; two men arrive in a pub, and one of them – ostensibly the local – orders them both a drink. They wear dark suits, and their ties are both off as if they are colleagues having just finished work. They sit side-by-side at the bar, exchanging observations about (you imagine) the world at large. 

However, things are not quite as normal as they seem. For a start, there are actually three men, one of whom is an interpreter, because the men don’t speak the same language. One of them – the non-local – slightly rushes his pint, not waiting for it to settle. The body language is awkward, almost forced.   

However, what is really abnormal about this exercise is not the setting, but the fact that these men are the leaders of Britain and China. This outing therefore represents the closest interaction by people in their position in more than 400 years. In fact, it is only the third state visit by a Chinese leader ever, the first one having taken place in 1999.   

The sheer abnormality of Britain and China actually talking to each other is beautifully brought out in ‘The Great Reversal’, the new book by Professor Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute.  Professor Brown has turned his attention to this relationship now because he feels that the UK lacks a national narrative about its relationship with China. This assertion is amply illustrated throughout his highly readable book, in which monumental involvements in each country’s history unfold with barely any interest or acknowledgment by the British public.   

I was primarily intrigued by what this book might reveal about the history of dialogue between the two countries. Wilton Park is a dialogue-focused organisation, and we have our own history of dialogue with China, as well as ambitious plans for the future. However, as a nation, we find ourselves at what feels like a low point in our exchanges with China. Protests in Hong Kong, Brexit, Covid-19, and the changing cast of UK Prime Ministers, have all contributed to major channels of interaction falling away. Bilateral economic and financial dialogues, people to people dialogues, high level strategic dialogues, and a host of schemes to promote joint development and prosperity have almost all lapsed. What Professor Brown’s book tells us is that this is not a historic nadir, but more like a reversion to the mean.  

There are three primary take-aways from this book when it comes to UK-China dialogue. The first is that trade has always led the way. Queen Elizabeth I, facing a squeeze on trade routes in Europe due to competition with Spain, initially dispatched missions eastwards in the 1650s, bearing letters for the Chinese Emperor (unfortunately none was delivered, despite four attempts). The motivation for opening contact between the two nations was explicitly commercial, seeking trade ‘which consisteth in the transporting outward of such things where of we have plenty, and in bringing in such things as we stand in need of’.   

This original ‘growth mission’ was to inform countless subsequent embassies, delegations and incursions into Chinese territory. Despite the infamous failure of the McCartney embassy in 1793, the East India Company and ambitious independent traders such as Jardine and Matheson gradually assumed a controlling position over China’s trade, and therefore its engagement with the world. This led initially to the addiction of the British to Chinese tea, before featuring some of the least edifying episodes of mercantilism in British history, when exports of opium to China eventually gave rise to two hopelessly one-sided conflicts (or ‘Opium Wars’) in the nineteenth century.   

Only after literally hundreds of years did this trade-based contact broaden into anything diplomatic or cultural (although military and missionary adventures feature in the middle pages of the book). The Chinese initially declined a diplomatic presence in the UK, before settling in Portland Place in 1877. Only after the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the invasion of the Japanese, the conclusion of the Second World War and a civil war between Chinese Nationalists and Communists, did national leaders come close to actually talking to each other. Ambassadorial-level relations were initiated in 1972, and the leader of the opposition Edward Heath met Mao Zedong in Beijing two years later; Queen Elizabeth became the first British sovereign to visit China in 1986 (shortly before Wham!).   

Now, as then, the rationale for Britain and China’s interaction is primarily economic, even if it contains many additional components. As Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy make plans for visits and dialogues as part of their own growth mission, we can expect commercial relations to be uppermost in their minds. 

The second lesson is that diplomacy is hard. There are numerous tragicomic examples in the book of British consuls and diplomats trying and failing to make a connection with their opposite numbers. In one passage, Brown describes how, of the consular officials who learned the fiendishly-difficult Chinese language and travelled to engage late-Qing China from 1855, 11 had died, nine had returned home on sick leave, while several remained at their posts in a precarious state of health; of the 90 arrivals between 1897 and 1920, five committed suicide and many suffered a nervous breakdown or serious physical ailment. Those diplomats that did manage to keep body and soul together had to endure the resentment and aloofness of their Chinese counterparts, and constant accusations from the British trading community that they were accommodating the Chinese. It is therefore not a surprise that a China-focused career in the diplomatic service is not high among the ambitions of British undergraduates (judging by the tiny numbers of those studying Mandarin). 

The third lesson is that relations between the two countries have always been asymmetric. In fact, the historical period during which Britain and China could legitimately see eye-to-eye was vanishingly brief. Brown identifies the 1997 Hong Kong handover as the point at which the balance of power changed, or perhaps the true turning point was China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001; either way, the tables turned frighteningly quickly. The UK and China had economies of equal size in 2005, but by the time Cameron and Xi visited the Plough Inn, the Chinese was already two-and-a-half times larger.   

What really struck me about this story is the contrast between the perennial failure of UK-China dialogue and the normality of British contact with other major powers. British leaders have exchanged state visits to certain European capitals for the best part of a thousand years. Many European royal families are not only familiar, they are actually family, having intermarried regularly through the centuries. In recent history, the British have fought and died alongside American and Commonwealth (and particularly ‘Five Eyes’) partners, bonding our people closely. Shared language, culture, and philosophy continues to sustain interactions with our closest European, Atlantic and Antipodean partners – meanwhile, there has never been a British Prime Minister or monarch who spoke Chinese (former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd is the closest we have had). 

This barren history of dialogue puts Cameron and Xi’s visit to the pub in a very different light. He was, as Professor Brown’s book shows, far more ambitious than any of his predecessors (or indeed successors). If Britain is to grow a tradition of ‘normal’ dialogue with the Chinese, it will, therefore, have to be almost from scratch. We will have to be patient, wrestle with the language, work within economic realities, and risk being driven ever-so-slightly mad. But in a world which is changing so quickly, establishing a sense of normality would be both an advantage and a significant accomplishment. 

This article was first published by Wilton Park

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In The Great Reversal, Brown’s intention is to provide British readers with our own China story and an understanding of how and why the West, through Britain, impacted and shaped the east in the form of China. Paul French caught up with Kerry Brown to talk Anglo-Chinese relations, the issue of our collective China knowledge (or lack of it) and what we can do about it.

Why do you think China and Chinese history have been so historically absent from our school curriculums, and why should we try and boost the study of China at the secondary school level?

British imperial history is extremely contentious, but the one impact it did have that no one could dispute is that Britain became involved, directly or indirectly, in a vast number of other countries and territories. That means that China has largely been seen as a subset of this broader history and tended to get subsumed into it. Things are complicated by the fact that the Chinese story was not straightforward. Apart from Hong Kong, ceded in different stages from 1842, China was part of what some historians have called an ‘informal’ empire and never directly governed. So that makes British involvement a more complex story to tell. Those are two of the more obvious reasons why even the relatively well-defined area of Britain’s relations with China and Chinese history are not easy to teach today and, therefore, largely neglected. On top of that is the obvious unfamiliarity with Chinese dynastic history, which is vast and largely unknown by the British.

On the other hand, Anglo-Chinese relations are widely taught in China, invariably accentuating the negative aspects of the shared histories. Presumably, this doesn’t help either.

Many Chinese people certainly have an understanding of there being a shared history between Britain and China. A lot of this is covered during the patriotic education curriculum introduced since the 1990s, reinforcing the sense that China was victimised and mistreated by colonial powers during the modern era. Of course, Britain figures amongst the most prominent. Much of this history can be contested – if people at least know some of the detail. But the fact is that from the early 19^th century, Britain enjoyed huge economic, military and technological advantages over China (and elsewhere) and exploited those. It did so opportunistically rather than through any intrinsic desire to bully or destroy. But in the end, the collective memories these actions inspired took deep roots amongst the Chinese. British people need to have at least a counter narrative that, while acknowledging some of these issues, at least paints a more complex and better-informed picture. That was one of the reasons why I wrote this history book.

Looking at Anglo-Chinese relations, you talk of a “great reversal”. What do you mean by that?

Britain and China have links going back at least to 1600. Over that four and a quarter centuries, on the whole, in terms of key areas like economic strength, military ability, technological and cultural power, and geopolitical influence, Britain was often stronger than China – particularly in the 19^th century onwards. Britain was the leading industrialising nation in the early modern era, giving it massive capacity in terms of naval technology and the ability to impact and influence China. China certainly had some influence on Britain, it’s true, through its aesthetics and the production of things Britain needed, like tea and porcelain. But the British China story till recently was one where in most areas, Britain enjoyed relative advantages. Since the 1980s, that situation has now reversed. In 2005, China’s economy overtook Britain’s. It is now about three times larger. China now has the largest navy in the world, at least in terms of vessels. In the area of technology, from artificial intelligence to quantum mechanics, it is pulling ahead of Britain. This has happened recently and quickly. That is the great trend of reversal I am referring to.

Do you think that our lack of a collective national understanding of Chinese and Anglo-Chinese history means we tend to demonise the PRC when it comes to trade disagreements, quota battles and more personal enmities, such as with Huawei?

I think the main issue that really struck me as I wrote the book was not so much that Britain demonised China. There had always been strands of Sinophobia and antagonism towards China way back in history, from the era of our first encounter as nations. There was plenty of pretty clear dislike of the British among Chinese, too. What was more striking was how little Britain ever really invested in making its mind up about what sort of place China was, and what sort of people the Chinese were. There seemed to be this deep ambiguity in British attitudes, veering from fascination on the one hand to something approaching apprehensive fear on the other – with no real attempt to create a consensus between these. That China today has a political system that is alien to Britain is obviously an issue – but I wonder whether some of the reactions to China we see now have, lurking behind them, these longer-standing confusions amongst ourselves and, of course, the lack of a really clear understanding of what we think China actually stands for and what kind of common ground we have with the place.

Do you think that this lack of understanding that your book seeks to address also means that Britain’s voice on key issues is less than it should be, as so many of our key decision-makers lack a grasp of the issues?

I think British politicians in recent years (and, of course, there have been exceptions) who deal with these issues often have attitudes towards China but very seldom real knowledge. There are plenty of things that Britain could and should hold China to account for. But the default has become more about stating standard lines of where Britain feels China is not acting properly, and feeling that just stating this is sufficient. I don’t think China looks down on Britain. But these days, I also don’t think it automatically believes Britain occupies some morally superior position. I think if British people understood their history with China more clearly, then they would be in a better place to work out how they can talk to China and how they can select issues that matter and which they need to debate and discuss with China. We might not believe we can understand China, but we can certainly understand our own long history with the place. That at least gives us a place to start from.

And finally, how can we improve our national consciousness of China? More space for China on the national curriculum? More university departments? More exchange visits?

The British story with China is a rich and fascinating one. British people should not find China unfamiliar. When they drink tea from porcelain cups and wear clothing made from silk, usually in gardens with plants and design features once inspired by China, they are all touching the parts of British life today that testify to the deep impact China has had on the way we live and who we are.  Britain also deeply influenced China in its modern development, in ways which were critically important. Just a recognition of this deep joint connection would help. Like I said just now, it might be a big ask to get people to delve into Chinese history and culture per se. But surely understanding British history with China should be more straightforward. And at least there is one relatively accessible book they can find that in now!

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