Britain welcomes China offer of talks on post-Brexit trade
Hunt meets Chinese foreign minister in Beijing
BEIJING, July 30, (Agencies): British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Monday he welcomed China’s offer of talks on a post-Brexit trade deal as he visited Beijing to try to strengthen ties before next year’s divorce from Europe.
Hunt, appointed earlier this month, was in the Chinese capital to meet Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other top officials, on a trip that will also include stops in Paris and Vienna for talks with his European counterparts on Brexit.
“We discussed the offer made by Foreign Minister Wang to open discussion of a possible free-trade deal done between Britain and China, post-Brexit,” Hunt said at a joint press conference.
“We welcome this and said that we will explore it.”
Britain is assessing its post-Brexit trade options. London is already moving ahead with plans to negotiate a freetrade deal with the United States as soon as it leaves the European Union, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said last week.
It also was revealed last week that May was sending ministers to the 27 other member states of the EU to try to broker back-door agreements after Brussels’ chief negotiator Michel Barnier raised reservations about her Brexit plan. An agreement in principle on Britain’s departure from the European trading bloc — set for March 29, 2019 — must be reached before a Europe summit in mid-October.
Hunt said he and Wang had “very constructive” talks in Beijing but neither gave any further details.
Hunt said that during their talks he also raised the issue of Briton Michael Simpson, who was stabbed to death by his estranged Chinese wife in Shanghai late last year, according to British media reports. Simpson’s two young children are in the custody of his wife’s family now that their mother has been jailed.
Simpson’s British family has been trying to obtain custody of the children but have been stymied by the courts and the wife’s relatives, according to the BBC and other reports.
“We also raised consular cases, including that of the Simpson children. Foreign Minister Wang said he would look into that case while also still respecting the independence of China’s judicial system,” Hunt said.
Hunt was due to meet Premier Li Keqiang later in the day.
China has been looking for allies in its fight with the United States, initiated by the Trump administration, which says China’s high-tech industries have stolen intellectual property from American firms and demanded Beijing act to buy more US products to reduce a $350 billion trade surplus.
Britain has pushed a strong message to Chinese companies that it is fully open for business as it prepares to leave the European Union next year, and China
is one of the countries with which Britain would like to sign a post-Brexit free trade deal.
Speaking to reporters in Beijing after meeting Hunt, the Chinese government’s top diplomat, Wang, said both countries agreed to step up trade with and investment in each other. Hunt said Wang had made an offer “to open discussions about a possible free trade deal done between Britain and China post Brexit”.
“That’s something that we welcome
and we said that we will explore,” Hunt said, without elaborating.
Wang, standing next to Hunt at a state guest house in the western suburbs of Beijing, made no direct mention of the free trade talks offer but said both countries had “agreed to proactively join up each others’ development strategies, and expand the scale of trade and mutual investment”. China and Britain should also oppose trade protectionism and uphold global free trade, Wang added.