Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he will not be forced to “choose between” relations with the US or China, ahead of the first visit of a British leader to Beijing in eight years.
Sir Keir said the UK would maintain “close ties” with the US on business, security and defence, but added that “sticking your head in the sand and ignoring China… wouldn’t be sensible”.
In the interview with Bloomberg News, he said the visit to the world’s second-largest economy could bring “significant opportunities” for British companies. Dozens of UK business leaders are expected to travel with him.
The trip comes days after the UK approved controversial plans for a vast new Chinese embassy in London.
The long-delayed decision was made despite opponents warning it could be used as a base for Chinese spying.
“I’m often invited to simply choose between countries. I don’t do that,” Sir Keir said in the interview.
“I remember when I was doing the US trade deal, and everybody put to me that I’d have to make a choice between the US and Europe, and I said, ‘I’m not making that choice.'”
“We’ve got very close relations with the US – of course, we want to – and we will maintain that business, alongside security and defence,” he said.
“Equally, just sticking your head in the sand and ignoring China, when it’s the second-biggest economy in the world and there are business opportunities wouldn’t be sensible.”
Of the delegation travelling with him to China, Sir Keir added: “They understand the opportunities that there are… That does not mean compromising on national security – quite the opposite.”
The trip, which includes stops in Beijing and Shanghai, comes after a turbulent few weeks in relations between the US and its allies.
In recent weeks, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on allies for opposing his demand to take control of Greenland, and later provoked a backlash in the UK by saying Nato troops had stayed “a little back” from the front line in Afghanistan.
Trump also threatened to slap a 100% tariff on Canadian goods if the country struck a trade deal with China.
Sir Keir has previously said that failing to navigate a relationship with China would be a “dereliction of duty”, rejecting the “isolationism” put forward by opponents of the Chinese government in the UK.
“For years we have blown hot and cold,” he said. “We had the golden age, which then flipped to an Ice Age. We reject that binary choice.”
In the interview with Bloomberg, Sir Keir suggested he would bring up disagreements with Beijing on human rights, including the fate of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon who was found guilty of colluding with foreign forces in December.
Lord Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, told the Press Association that Sir Keir would be “pathetic” if he did not raise the case of Lai who is a British citizen.
British policy toward China, Lord Patten continued, had rested on a “falsehood” that “in order to do business with them, we must avoid saying anything they don’t like or doing anything that they don’t like”.
He added: “What will not persuade them is if it becomes the ‘oh, by the way’ issue in meetings where you don’t actually raise something until the end as you’re going out, just so you can tell the press you did it.”