By Farrah Master, Colin Howe and Liz Lee
HONG KONG/BEIJING, Jan 30 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to China is the latest victory Beijing can tout in its competition with Washington, but the deal he brings back to London also shows the limits of the balancing act the middle powers are trying to play.
He follows Canadian counterpart Mark Carney, who struck a trade deal on a similar visit weeks ago before heading to Davos to announce a new global trade order after US President Donald Trump strained longstanding ties with allies.
European leaders have also visited, such as India’s Narendra Modi and others since Trump began his second term a year ago, but it is less clear what long-term economic and security benefits such visits have for Western powers.
“Traditional U.S. allies feel overworked and are now hedging their bets, but they are far from being able or willing to substitute China for the United States,” said John Quelch, an expert on global strategy at Duke Kunson University.
From the perspective of London, Ottawa and other Western capitals, the visits show Trump that options exist if he continues to press the Greenland issues to renegotiate the USMCA trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
But these are “superficial gestures amid stagnant global growth,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis.
“These visits highlight the serious limitations of any ‘pivot’ to China,” she said. “They expose the weakness of middle powers, chasing scraps while China’s export flood overwhelms their industries.”
And in contrast to Trump’s chaotic tariff policies and growing list of threats and demands toward partners and rivals alike, they benefit from supporting the narrative of China’s broader pivot to Beijing as the world’s “trusted partner.”
“President Trump’s efforts to isolate the United States from China are also isolating the United States from the world,” Quelch added.
Starmer scores on Visa, whiskey wins
Deals won by Western powers on such visits come in exchange for deeper integration with a country that last year ran a trade surplus the size of the Dutch economy but where consumption is so weak that even its own producers cannot prosper at home.
During his trip to the world’s second-largest economy, Starmer secured 30-day visa-free access for Britons visiting China and lower tariffs on whiskey, while British drugmaker AstraZeneca unveiled a $15 billion investment in China.
He found nothing but “clear dialogue” on tensions caused by China’s increasingly assertive stance on Taiwan, stronger ties with Russia after the Ukraine invasion and a crackdown on rights in Hong Kong, a former British colony.
British and American politicians who have criticized Starmer’s trip have also accused him of espionage and human rights abuses, which Beijing denies.
Similarly, Carney left China expecting Beijing to cut or reduce tariffs on canola, lobster, crab and peas, but that prompted a threat of 100% tariffs from Trump, who warned Ottawa about allowing Chinese EVs into North America.
And before Starmer wrapped up his visit to China, Trump warned Britain that doing business with Beijing was dangerous, after the prime minister praised the economic benefits of restoring ties with China.
China’s export-driven growth poses risks for the West
China’s imports were flat at $2.6 trillion last year, but they were largely driven by energy and commodities from emerging markets rather than the West.
Its trade surplus, however, jumped a fifth, to a record $1.2 trillion, as its manufacturers responded to Trump’s tariff measures by outpacing almost every other market in the world at the expense of domestic producers.
Such a pace of growth puts China’s trade surplus on track to overtake the $3-trillion French economy by 2030 and the $5-trillion German economy by 2033.
Its exports to the European Union rose by 8.4 percent last year, while imports fell by 0.4 percent. China sent 7.8% more to the UK, while buying 4.7% less. With Canada, sales rose 3.2% while purchases fell 10.4%.
“This makes it a particularly risky proposition for countries seeking to protect or develop their own manufacturing industries to significantly increase trade integration with China,” said Ishwar Prasad, former China director of the International Monetary Fund.
“China does not provide a safe harbor for countries trying to deal with the adverse economic impact of US tariffs,” added Prasad, who now teaches trade policy at Cornell University.
Still, some analysts say, a significant trade win with China may not be as important — or even realistic — for countries like the U.K. or Canada right now.
Resetting the relationship may be the best they can get, but that could still be valuable, as a previous breakdown in the relationship exposed a critical supply chain dependency on China.
Analysts say the Asian giant’s trade countermeasures have helped widen rather than narrow the bilateral trade imbalance.
Starmer and Carney’s visits are a “propaganda coup for Beijing,” warned Noah Barkin, a Europe-China expert at the German Marshall Fund and Rhodium Group, adding, “This is not a pivot for China. This is about easing tensions with Beijing.”
“No country wants to be in open conflict with two superpowers at the same time,” he added.
(Additional reporting by Liangping Gao and Kevin Yao in Beijing and David Kirton in Shenzhen; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
