British Prime Minister David Cameron's efforts to double trade with China by 2015 received a boost on Tuesday when aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce won a $1.2-billion order from China Eastern Airlines. Cameron, making his first visit to the Asian powerhouse since taking office in May, has targeted annual trade of more than $100 billion with the world's second-largest economy within five years.
The prime minister told British reporters he would raise human rights issues with Beijing but it wasn't Britain's role to lecture or hector China, a one-party communist state. Some rights groups have accused London of soft-pedalling on sensitive political issues to avoid harming its trade prospects.
The Rolls-Royce order, signed in Cameron's presence, is for Trent 700 engines to power 16 Airbus A330 aircraft and is by far the biggest such deal sealed during a trip by the largest British delegation ever to visit China. Foreign Secretary William Hague told Britain's parliament that agreements to be signed during Cameron's trip "may add up to about 1.7 billion pounds ($2.75 billion) of contracts."
Britain is competing with other Western nations to sell more to China and its vast population. China and France clinched deals valued at around $20 billion last week during an overseas trip by President Hu Jintao, while Germany remains by far Beijing's biggest European trade partner. British officials say UK-based companies would secure $5 billion worth of business as part of a deal signed by China with Airbus in France last week.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Cameron called for progress on the Doha round of world trade talks, long paralysed by disputes over farm trade centred on the United States, China and India. His 36-hour visit to China comes ahead of a G20 summit in South Korea starting on Thursday. "Next year has to see the deal done, and that means action now," Cameron wrote of the stalled trade talks. Britain sees a trade deal as a way of kick-starting growth when budgets are tight and monetary policy options limited.
Cameron met Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday in the Great Hall of the People and is scheduled to have talks with President Hu on Wednesday before travelling on to the G20 summit. China will be hoping Britain does not bring up in public thorny questions such as imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and other dissidents like Gao Zhisheng, and avoids too much talk of the situation in Tibet.
"We want a stronger economic and business relationship with China - we are the fifth-largest economy in the world, but we have only 2 percent of China's imports," Cameron said in a round of interviews with British broadcasters. "But our dialogue is mature enough that we cover all of these areas, including human rights," he added.
The prime minister is accompanied by four senior ministers and more than 40 business leaders seeking deals to fill order books while the government cuts spending at home. A number of relatively small deals had already been announced, including measures to boost sales of Scotch whisky and allow the import of breeding pigs into China.
Underlining the centrality of trade on the trip, Cameron's first stop in the Beijing area was a visit to a supermarket run by British retail company Tesco. Tesco plans $3 billion of investment to build new shopping malls in China over the next 5 years. It competes with other international food retailers such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart.