Stable China-UK relations benefit both sides: China Daily editorial

On Monday afternoon, Andy Burnham, the United Kingdom's seventh prime minister since 2016, stood outside No 10 Downing Street and said: "Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again, the moment we bring back hope."

It was a good line that millions of UK people will be looking to him to deliver on. But "hope", as every UK leader has learned to their cost, is a currency that devalues fast when the fiscal arithmetic refuses to cooperate.

The new prime minister inherits a country facing domestic challenges, with many residents struggling with high living costs. Burnham has ruled out raising income tax, VAT or national insurance. Yet he has promised the largest public housing program in decades, reindustrialization and the return of utilities to public control.

The math does not add up.

Against this backdrop, deepening economic engagement with China is a necessity. Burnham's predecessor, Keir Starmer, stabilized relations with Beijing. And Starmer's January visit to China — the first by a UK prime minister in eight years — sustained the momentum of a suite of dialogue mechanisms that had lain dormant for too long.

The China-UK Joint Economic and Trade Commission is back, meeting for its 15th session in London this month. The Economic and Financial Dialogue, suspended for six years, produced nearly 70 policy outcomes when it resumed in Beijing last year. A new Financial Working Group has been established. The Joint Commission Meeting on Science and Technology has identified climate, health and agriculture as shared priorities.

This is the institutional architecture that Burnham can now work with. His own career record in Manchester gives him an advantage: he has seen Chinese investment work. During his mayoralty, Chinese companies poured over £6 billion ($8.07 billion) into Greater Manchester, backing regeneration projects that created jobs and revived communities.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang extended his congratulations on Monday, expressing readiness to strengthen engagement, deepen mutual trust, expand exchanges and cooperation, and advance the long-term and stable comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.

Li also noted that stronger dialogue and cooperation would not only advance the development of both nations but inject stability into global peace as well. It is clear China is prepared to work with the Burnham government for the two countries' common interests.

Yet the shadow of British Steel looms large at the moment. The nationalization of the Scunthorpe plant — seized from China's Jingye Group just days before Burnham took office — is a flagrant violation of the UK's contractual obligations.

Burnham must deal with this with prudence. He should bear the bigger picture in mind, as the potential for bilateral cooperation is too great to be jeopardized by the dispute. The bilateral trade in goods reached $103.7 billion in 2025, while the two countries' services trade exceeds $30 billion and has huge untapped potential. The UK is the world's second-largest services exporter; China is the second-largest services importer. A China-UK services trade agreement — which both sides have committed to exploring — could be transformative.

As UK Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle said at the July "Export to China" event in London: "Both sides can enhance understanding through dialogue, join hands in cooperation, and maintain stable economic and trade relations benefiting both peoples."

Burnham needs China if he is to deliver his flagship promises. Promoting the UK's green transition, advanced manufacturing, life sciences and electric vehicles — all require investment that a cash-strapped UK Treasury cannot provide alone. Chinese capital can help re-industrialize the north and the Midlands, exactly the left-behind communities Burnham has pledged to serve.

The China hawks in Westminster will not disappear. But the lesson of Starmer is that a prime minister who fails to deliver growth loses his party's confidence. Starmer was undone not by a single crisis but by a cumulative sense that he had no solution. Burnham's "Manchesterism" — his commitment to shifting power from Westminster, expanding public control and promoting regional development — was forged in a city that benefited tremendously from Chinese engagement. The UK will benefit if he can now apply that cooperative pragmatism on a national scale.

The mechanisms are in place. The will in Beijing is clear. Burnham's own instincts are sensible. The question is whether he can resist the gravitational pull of geopolitical pressures long enough and resolve differences through consultations to make it work.