The Treasury is set to finalize Rachel Reeves’ first visit to China as chancellor just days before Donald Trump is sworn in for the second time as US president.
Sky News understands that Whitehall officials have planned a mid-January resumption of economic and financial dialogue between the UK and China after a six-year hiatus.
Sources said preparations were being made for the chancellor to travel to China for the summit in the week of January 13, while warning that the date had not yet been finalized and could still change.
President Trump’s inauguration is scheduled for January 20, and there are growing expectations that he will impose drastic tariffs that could spark a full-blown trade war between the United States and China .
At the G20 summit in Brazil last month, Sir Keir Starmer met Chinese President Xi Jinping and said the UK “would be a predictable and pragmatic partner”, according to a government account of the meeting.
“They discussed next steps and agreed that the Chancellor would visit Beijing next year to discuss economic and financial cooperation with her counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng.”
The Treasury declined to comment further on the details of the upcoming economic and financial dialogue between the two countries.
The meeting would be the first of its kind since June 2019, when Philip – now Lord – Hammond was chancellor.
Deteriorating political relations and the pandemic helped prevent new chapters of what was supposed to be an annual summit from taking place.
A bilateral meeting in January would take place amid debate over whether Britain plans to follow the European Union and the United States in imposing tariffs on electric vehicle imports from China.
Alongside the government-to-government talks, a private sector delegation is expected to hold a financial services summit, attended by companies including HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered.
In July 2022, key city stakeholders were informed that provisional plans for the 11th UK-China EFD had been abandoned after months of preparations.
Under the chancellorship of George Osborne, Cameron’s government prioritized a “golden age” of UK-China relations, during which Beijing would allow tens of billions of pounds of investment in projects of British infrastructure.
The Conservatives, however, have been criticized for letting economic ties take precedence over concerns about China’s human rights record.
Speaking to Bloomberg two weeks after Labor’s general election victory, Ms Reeves said: “We are a small economy open to trade and we benefit from those trade links with countries around the world, both for exports and imports, but also for foreign direct investments.
“Our view is that where possible we trade, we cooperate and we contest in areas where it is important to contest, but we do not want to close the UK economy to imports and exports.
“We benefit from these trade links around the world, including with China. »
Current Chinese investments in Britain include British Steel, which is owned by the Jingye Group.
Thousands of jobs are under threat at its Scunthorpe steelworks, amid prolonged talks over a government subsidy to help it shift to greener steel production.