BEIJING: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Thursday for a deeper relationship with China during what he called \u201cchallenging times for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UK leader told China\u2019s leader Xi Jinping that their countries need to work together on global stability, climate change and other issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have long been clear that the UK and China need a long term, consistent and comprehensive strategic partnership,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Starmer, the first British prime minister to visit in eight years, was holding talks with Xi in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing as the two nations try to improve relations after several years of acrimony.<\/p>\n
The disruption to global trade under US President Donald Trump has made expanding trade and investment more imperative for many governments. Starmer is the fourth leader of a US ally to visit Beijing this month, following those of South Korea, Canada and Finland. The German chancellor is expected to visit next month.<\/p>\n
Starmer, who became prime minister in July 2024, is trying to expand opportunities for British companies at a time when the economy at home is slow. More than 50 top business executives have joined him on the trip, along with the leaders of some cultural organizations.<\/p>\n
The UK leader earlier met Zhao Leji, the chairman of China\u2019s legislature, the National People\u2019s Congress.<\/p>\n
Relations deteriorated in recent years over growing concern about Chinese spying activity in Great Britain, China\u2019s support for Russia in the Ukraine war, and the crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, the former British colony that was returned to China in 1997.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Thursday for a deeper relationship with China during what he called \u201cchallenging times for the world.\u201d The UK leader told China\u2019s leader Xi Jinping that their countries need to work together on global stability, climate change and other issues. \u201cI have long been clear that the UK and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92941,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92924\/revisions\/92941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}