Beijing: UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly will visit Beijing on Tuesday to try and stabilize the relations between the two countries, which are at their lowest point in decades.
Cleverly will be the first top UK diplomat to visit China over the past five years with bilateral relations having turned for the worse in the meantime. Tensions around Taiwan, Beijing’s position regarding the conflict in Ukraine, the controversial issue of Uighur Muslims as well as the sharp technological competition between China and the Western countries exacerbated by mutual restrictive measures have significantly cooled UK-China relations, culminating in UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying in May that Beijing poses the “biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity.”
Nevertheless, China remains of considerable economic interest to the United Kingdom, and it is expected that, aside from political normalization, Cleverly’s trip could provide an opportunity for restarting talks on shelved investment projects and cooperation in culture and education.
