Photo: Xinhua

A British cabinet minister has recently rejected calls to designate China as a "security threat" and stressed the importance of enhancing ties with Beijing, ahead of a reported China visit by Chancellor Rachel Reeves next month. Analysts said on Monday that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's cabinet is seeking to improve relations with Beijing by adopting a more flexible and pragmatic China policy so as to promote British interests and offset the uncertainties of international politics. 

According to British media on Sunday, Lucy Powell, the Commons leader, dismissed calls by shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel to put China on a list of hostile states that pose a security threat to the UK.

"We have to have trade relationships, and we have to work internationally with countries like China in our national interests," Powell said on Sunday, per the Telegraph, "And that's why we have been trying to rebuild the relationship with China because it is an important one to our country, but also to the rest of the world."

Asked if she felt the balance was right at the moment, Powell noted that "Having a closer relationship with China is in our national interests. It's in the international interest that we all share, whether it comes to things like tackling climate change, when it comes to things like global trade that's in our national interest," the Telegraph reported. 

Cui Hongjian, a professor at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, believed that the moves from the Starmer administration were based on a critical and opposed stance to the policies of the previous Conservative government, including its China policy, while the current government hopes to seize the opportunity of China's further opening-up and bring tangible benefits to the UK. 

According to data from the Confederation of British Industry, the UK economy is "headed for the worst of all worlds" as businesses expect activity to fall at the start of 2025, Sky News reported on Monday. It comes after the release of figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics suggesting that the UK economy shrank by 0.1 percent in October, for the second month in a row.

Li Guanjie, a research fellow with the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies under the Shanghai International Studies University, told the Global Times that the Starmer administration hopes to reverse the extreme, rigid and unsustainable approach to China of the Conservatives in the past, and adopt a relatively flexible and pragmatic approach, which can also be seen as a "pendulum effect" in British politics.

We have seen recent adjustments not only in the UK's policy toward China, but also in its policy toward Europe and the US, said Cui, "the UK wants to proactively adjust its diplomatic landscape to deal with uncertainties brought about by the change in the US government," Cui said.

Not engaging with a major power like China would be a loss to British interests, both in the economic and diplomatic spheres, Cui said.

Western media including Financial Times recently disclosed that Britain's finance minister Rachel Reeves will next month head a delegation of leading bankers to Beijing to seek closer ties across a range of financial services. 

Meanwhile, British media reported that a handful of UK MPs recently hyped the case of "a Chinese spy" who had close business ties to Britain's Prince Andrew. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson slammed the smear as "preposterous." 

However, whether it is to correct the Conservatives' policy or to help the British economy, the Labour government is under enormous pressure to improve relations with China, including the overall climate of British public opinion, Parliament, and the opposition party, Cui said, "The Starmer government is being tested in terms of ways to make an adjustment and making it sustainable."

For China-UK relations to usher in a real reset, it is necessary to first engage and cooperate, then seek to solve problems gradually, and lead the development of China-UK relations through high-level interactions, Li said.