AGL 38.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.02 (-0.05%)
AIRLINK 206.20 Increased By ▲ 8.84 (4.48%)
BOP 9.60 Increased By ▲ 0.06 (0.63%)
CNERGY 6.03 Increased By ▲ 0.12 (2.03%)
DCL 8.96 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (1.59%)
DFML 37.10 Increased By ▲ 1.36 (3.81%)
DGKC 96.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-0.11%)
FCCL 35.70 Increased By ▲ 0.45 (1.28%)
FFBL 88.94 Increased By ▲ 6.64 (8.07%)
FFL 13.47 Increased By ▲ 0.30 (2.28%)
HUBC 128.30 Increased By ▲ 0.75 (0.59%)
HUMNL 13.70 Increased By ▲ 0.20 (1.48%)
KEL 5.41 Increased By ▲ 0.09 (1.69%)
KOSM 7.07 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (1%)
MLCF 44.79 Increased By ▲ 0.09 (0.2%)
NBP 60.74 Decreased By ▼ -0.68 (-1.11%)
OGDC 216.50 Increased By ▲ 1.83 (0.85%)
PAEL 40.76 Increased By ▲ 1.97 (5.08%)
PIBTL 8.40 Increased By ▲ 0.15 (1.82%)
PPL 193.98 Increased By ▲ 0.90 (0.47%)
PRL 39.65 Increased By ▲ 0.99 (2.56%)
PTC 26.78 Increased By ▲ 0.98 (3.8%)
SEARL 107.05 Increased By ▲ 3.45 (3.33%)
TELE 8.51 Increased By ▲ 0.21 (2.53%)
TOMCL 36.19 Increased By ▲ 1.19 (3.4%)
TPLP 13.70 Increased By ▲ 0.40 (3.01%)
TREET 23.00 Increased By ▲ 0.84 (3.79%)
TRG 61.15 Increased By ▲ 5.56 (10%)
UNITY 33.27 Increased By ▲ 0.30 (0.91%)
WTL 1.69 Increased By ▲ 0.09 (5.63%)
BR100 11,942 Increased By 215.3 (1.84%)
BR30 36,911 Increased By 534.7 (1.47%)
KSE100 112,044 Increased By 2530.9 (2.31%)
KSE30 35,299 Increased By 785.4 (2.28%)

BEIJING: Britain’s finance minister Rachel Reeves will visit China on a two-day trip in January to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019, three people with knowledge of the plan said.

Reeves is scheduled to meet China’s vice premier He Lifeng, the country’s economy tsar, on Jan. 11 in Beijing to restart what had been annual talks known as the Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD), they said.

If those discussions show progress, the two sides could look to re-launch what had been a regular and wider meeting known as the Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO) later next year, the sources said.

British businesses have also pressed to restart meetings of the UK-China CEO Council, a group established by then-Prime Minister Theresa May and then-Premier Li Keqiang in 2018, one of the sources added.

Rachel Reeves to push for UK/EU reset at finance ministers’ meeting

Reuters reported on Thursday that HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker will lead a business delegation that will visit China next month in a bid to boost trade and investment with a particular focus on financial services.

Reeves will also go to Shanghai, where she will meet with British companies operating in China on Jan. 12, according to the sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.

Britain decided to suspend most economic dialogues with China in 2020 after Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong, the former British colony.

Since then, spying allegations, the war in Ukraine, and the sanctioning of lawmakers have increased tensions between the two countries.

The Labour government, in power in Britain since July, has made improving ties with China one of its main foreign policy goals after a period under successive Conservative governments when relations plunged to their lowest in decades.

In 2022, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Conservative, declared the end of a “golden era” of relations with China that one of his predecessors, David Cameron, had championed.

Over the preceding decade, British and Chinese officials had met annually for high-level trade and investment talks, holding an EFD almost every year and a JETCO every two years.

Those talks resulted in the London-Shanghai stock connect scheme, Britain joining the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and joint investment into green technologies, including the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.

Comments

200 characters