Starmer in Beijing to reset UK ties with China (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Keir Starmer says he wants a more consistent approach to China, with no more veering from Golden Age to Ice Age. He's due to arrive in Beijing this hour. The first trip to China by a British prime minister since 2018. He'll meet President Xi Jinping and is accompanied by around 60 business and cultural leaders. The government argues that despite the security threats posed by China, it's important to reboot the UK's relationship with Beijing. The Conservatives have accused him of cosying up to a country that can't be trusted. Our China correspondent, Laura Bicker, looks ahead to the visit.

[00:00:38] Speaker 2: Beijing is not the most welcoming place in winter... ..as the rivers are frozen by icy blasts. Coming here is a calculated choice. One a number of world leaders have made in the last two months, including the French president and the Canadian prime minister. Chinese officials have been preparing a conveyor belt of deals in the last few months and it looks like the United Kingdom is next. For China, it is a chance to portray itself as a stable, reliable, predictable partner, especially in comparison to the United States. For the UK, it's a chance for a relationship reset.

[00:01:25] Speaker 1: Mr President...

[00:01:27] Speaker 2: This formal banquet and state visit ten years ago was the so-called golden era of UK-China relations. A time when Britain bet big on Beijing... ..until it all started to unravel. China's crackdown on Hong Kong has strained relations and he's been urged to raise the case of Jimmy Lai, a UK national and pro-democracy campaigner imprisoned in the former colony. And although plans were approved for China's super-embassy in London, intelligence agencies still warn Chinese state actors pose an almost daily threat. So what's the reward for taking all these risks?

[00:02:12] Speaker 3: China sees the UK certainly as being, as a partner, they see us as being a global service partner, in terms of we've got a footprint that no-one else really has in terms of banking, law firms, accounting firms, you know, not just in China, in Asia, but globally. So I think when they see us, they see a country that punches above its weight.

[00:02:34] Speaker 2: The Prime Minister said Britain's relationship with China is emerging from the ice age. But with so many disputes and doubts to navigate, this visit may simply signal the start of a slow diplomatic thaw. Laura Bicker, BBC News, Beijing.

[00:02:51] Speaker 1: Let's speak to our Chief Political Correspondent, Henry Zeppelin, who's standing by for us. Hi, Henry. So what's your sense of what the Prime Minister wants to get out of this?

[00:03:00] Speaker 4: Hi, Lewis. I think the Prime Minister is trying to reboot relations between Britain and China, and I think the most visible way he can do that is by visiting China. As you were hearing there, the first British Prime Minister to go there for eight years, since Theresa May in January 2018. I mean, I was on that trip in 2018, and there was no sense then of how fast relations between the UK and China would cool. At that point, we were still in the aftermath of the so-called golden era of relations between UK and China, spearheaded by David Cameron as Prime Minister and George Osborne as Chancellor. Clearly, things have changed dramatically. I don't think Zakir Starmer is intending to signal here that he's going back to those days when Britain threw open its doors to Chinese investment and vice versa, to some degree. I think, though, what he is trying to say, what he is trying to really say to the British public to explain why he's there, given the UK does still have all sorts of differences with the Chinese regime, is that China's size makes it simply unignorable from his point of view.

[00:04:05] Speaker 1: What about the other political parties? What's their stance on this?

[00:04:08] Speaker 4: Well, the Conservatives have been very critical of Zakir Starmer over this. They say he simply shouldn't be there. Writing in The Telegraph today, Kemi Badenox says that Zakir Starmer is going with good intentions, but they are not enough. She says that China is important, but that the government is putting process and posturing first, by which I think she's referring to the government's decision to approve this very controversial and very drawn out proposal by the Chinese government to build a so-called mega embassy in the city of London here in the UK and various other things that Kemi Badenox has been quite critical of. And I wonder, by the way, Starmer won't be doing PMQs today, obviously, because he's about to touch down in Beijing, but I wonder whether in our stand-in PMQs with David Lammy representing the government, he's the Deputy Prime Minister, but he went to China last year when he was Foreign Secretary. I wonder if we might hear more of that criticism from the Conservatives later today.