Chancellor Rachel Reeves in China amid pressure at home over economic turmoil

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe discussed China/UK relations with Isabel Hilton, founder of China dialogue

Transcript

00:00Well, let's talk now to Isabel Hilton, the founder of China Dialogue. Isabel,

00:04welcome back. To be blunt, what's in this for China? What's in this for the UK?

00:10Well, curiously, I think that they're both looking for much the same thing.

00:13FDI into China has been dropping. Relations between the UK and China have suffered from

00:20a whole series of turbulent events from COVID to Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Ukraine,

00:27and I think that they both want to get back on a slightly more even keel, perhaps just in advance

00:33of a return of Donald Trump to the White House. And they're both looking to strengthen arrangements

00:39that could be good for their economy. So China needs more exports, would welcome more investment,

00:45and Britain, frankly, needs more investment and more exports also after Brexit. So looking for

00:53what's mutually advantageous, and I think from China's perspective, looking to have a slightly

00:59more solid relationship with a US ally, which might come in useful in the no doubt turbulent

01:06months to come. UK finance minister Rachel Reeves has staked a lot on this visit. You can pull

01:14political levers in London or China, but as we know, sometimes nothing much happens. Will it this

01:21time? Well, I've read the Treasury statement on the outcome of the visit, and they're promising

01:29600 million to the UK economy over five years, setting course for a billion. But if you read it,

01:35it's all, we agree that, we promise that, we hope to. So we don't actually have very much

01:42that is set in stone and will deliver. It's a taking of temperature rather than a fixed promise.

01:48But I guess they're both hoping that it will flourish. But right now, this is very much in

01:54the early stages. Mr Trump, of course, will officially be in office in just over a week.

02:02The relationship between China and the UK will not be straightforward, will it?

02:10No, but the relationship between the UK and Washington doesn't look very straightforward

02:15either at the moment. I mean, there's been a lot of quite surprisingly spiky exchanges between

02:21London and Washington, particularly not so much with Trump himself, but with Elon Musk, who has

02:27been making himself unpopular in Britain and in Europe with his remarks on domestic politics in

02:34other people's countries. So I don't think that this is going to be quite the straightforward,

02:40warm relationship that the UK has enjoyed in the past. And we don't know, frankly,

02:46what Donald Trump will do and how much of what he says he will do will actually happen.

02:51The record is that he says a lot of things and not many of them do actually happen.

02:55But he is very fond of tariffs. And he's threatening tariffs, of course, against China,

03:01but he's also threatening tariffs against the European Union and possibly the United Kingdom.

03:06So I think all around, we are entering some very, very turbulent waters. And we don't know,

03:13frankly, how things are going to fall out. But I think that what one result of this will be

03:18that countries that can talk to each other will talk to each other and will try perhaps

03:24collectively to manage what is now becoming the problem of Washington.

03:28Will results on this UK trip to China come quickly enough for UK Finance Minister Rachel

03:35Reeves, who is, along with her governing party, the Labour Party, under fire back home?

03:43I think that's frankly not very likely. I mean, as I said, the figures are relatively modest.

03:48We're talking about 600 million in promises. And if you look at what the UK lost from leaving the

03:56European Union, three billion a year just in agricultural export loss. So although this is

04:05potentially a promising relationship, the results are not going to come quickly enough or be large

04:10enough really to compensate for the difficulties that the UK is now facing. And I think that Rachel

04:16Reeves will continue to be under fire. It is fairly absurd to imagine that she could fix the

04:22UK economy within a matter of weeks or the relatively short time that they've been in power.

04:28But the nature of politics is that she will now get the blame for any problems that the

04:33economy faces. And I'm afraid this won't be a lifeboat.

04:37Isabel, thank you. Isabel Hilton, the founder of China Dialogue.

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