The Treasury is close to finalising Rachel Reeves’s first visit to China as chancellor just days before Donald Trump is sworn in for a second time as US president.
Sky News understands that Whitehall officials have pencilled in a mid-January resumption of the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue after a six-year hiatus.
Sources said preparations were being drawn up for the chancellor to travel to China for the summit in the week of 13 January, although they cautioned that the date had yet to be finalised and could yet change.
President Trump’s inauguration is set for 20 January, with growing expectations that he will impose sweeping tariffs which could trigger a widespread trade war between the US and China.
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At the G20 summit in Brazil last month, Sir Keir Starmer met China’s President Xi Jinping and said the UK “would be a predictable and pragmatic partner”, according to a government readout of the meeting.
“They discussed next steps and agreed that the chancellor should visit Beijing next year to discuss economic and financial cooperation with her counterpart, vice premier He Lifeng.”
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The Treasury declined to comment further on the details of the next Economic and Financial Dialogue between the two countries.
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The meeting would be the first such gathering since June 2019, when Philip – now Lord – Hammond was chancellor.
Deteriorating political relations and the pandemic conspired to prevent further chapters of what was intended to be an annual summit taking place since then.
A bilateral meeting in January would come amid searching questions about whether Britain plans to follow the European Union and US 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 told that provisional plans for the 11th UK-China EFD had been abandoned after months of preparations.
During the chancellorship of George Osborne, the Cameron government prioritised a “golden era” of UK-China relations in which Beijing would authorise tens of billions of pounds of investment into British infrastructure projects.
The Conservatives were criticised, however, for allowing economic ties to prevail over concerns about China’s human rights record.
Speaking to Bloomberg two weeks after Labour’s general election victory, Ms Reeves said: “We are a small open trading economy and we benefit from those trade links with countries around the world, both for exports and imports, but also for foreign direct investment.
“Our view is that where possible we trade, we co-operate and we challenge in areas where it’s important to challenge, but we don’t want to close the UK economy down to imports and exports.
“We benefit from those trade links around the world, including with China.”
China’s current investments in Britain include British Steel, which is owned by Jingye Group.
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