The UK’s new business secretary, Peter Kyle, will fly to Beijing this week as part of Keir Starmer’s continuing efforts to revitalise the UK’s trade relationship with China and provide growth to the British economy.
The former science and technology secretary, who was promoted in Friday’s government reshuffle, is expected to land in China on Wednesday, picking up the schedule of his predecessor, Jonathan Reynolds, who is now the chief whip.
Kyle was due to fly to Washington on Sunday evening as part of the preparations for Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK and then meet in Beijing with the Chinese minister of commerce, Wang Wentao, at the first gathering of the UK China joint economic and trade commission (Jetco) for seven years.
Kyle said his US visit was “key to strengthening” the “special relationship” and would help in “building momentum” on the tech partnership and tariff deal with the US ahead of Trump’s visit.
The business secretary will meet the Office of Science and Technology Policy director, Michael Kratsios, and Sriram Krishnan, senior AI adviser at the White House to discuss the AI Pillar of the Tech Partnership.
In addition to political meetings, he will meet Benito Minicucci, chief executive of Alaska Airlines and Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus to “cement” the UK’s reputation as an investment destination. He will then fly directly to Beijing, the UK government said.
Jetco summits were paused by Boris Johnson in response to Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, with Covid stalling dialogue in subsequent years.
Kyle is the latest in a long line of senior cabinet ministers to visit China since Labour came to power last year, including the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in January and the new deputy prime minister, David Lammy, last October, who visited in his previous role as foreign secretary.
However, because of the short notice and the decision to fly to Washington on Sunday, Kyle is expected to miss out on a visit to an international trade conference in the eastern city of Xiamen, pencilled in by Reynolds’ team.
About 200 British businesses will be represented at the China International Fair for Investment and Trade (Cifit) in a delegation led by James Sassoon, a former businessman and adviser to David Cameron.
A report published by the British Chamber of Commerce in China in May said that high-level dialogues such as Jetco were “much needed” forums for spurring bilateral trade and investment.
“We had a period of seven or eight years with very little traction, where I think the UK government didn’t really have a clear view on how to approach the relationship with China. There was a lot of stopping and starting and obviously all the changes in leadership didn’t help,” said Beijing-based Tom Simpson, the managing director, China, at the China-Britain Business Council, which is participating in Cifit.
“But since the general election last year, there’s been steady improvement in the engagement we are seeing, in the quality of engagement as well as the parts of the relationship that often don’t get picked up on … [they] are now being restored,” Simpson said.
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While the UK is hoping the dialogue will boost trade with China and provide Starmer with much-needed economic growth, some say the campaign has achieved little so far.
“By my count, this will be the ninth government representative to go to China since Labour were elected,” said Sam Goodman, the senior policy director at the Chinese Strategic Risks Institute.
“People in government are trying to characterise this as a reset, but I query how much the UK has got out of this reset so far. When Rachel Reeves went in January she got commitments of £600m in investment from the Chinese, substantially less than the £2bn she got from Bahrain, a much smaller country, a few months later,” he said.
China is the UK’s fifth-largest export market, worth about £41bn in goods and services. “You cannot address economic growth without addressing China. This is a case of the British government doing the right thing in the national interest, creating jobs in Britain,” a source close to the UK delegation said.
In the past year, there has been soaring interest in China in British sporting ventures, from football to motor racing to snooker. In October the Premier League opened its first office in Beijing, while the sailing company Clipper Ventures has announced plans to open its first training base in the port city of Qingdao.
In education, there are now as many Chinese-owned schools in the UK as there are British school brands in China, according to research from Venture Education, a Beijing-based education consultancy.
