By Farah Master, Colleen 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 offer in its rivalry with Washington, but the deals it brings back to London also show the limits of the balancing act middle powers can attempt.
He follows Canadian counterpart Mark Carney, who hammered out a trade deal in a similar visit weeks ago, before heading to Davos to announce a new global trade order as US President Donald Trump cuts long-standing ties with allies.
European leaders have also visited, as has India’s Narendra Modi and others, since Trump began his second term a year ago, but it is less clear what tangible long-term benefits such visits provide Western powers.
“Traditional American allies are feeling hard done by and are now hedging their bets, but they are far from being able or willing to replace China with the United States,” said John Quelch, a global strategy expert at Duke Kunshan University.
From the perspective of London, Ottawa and other Western capitals, the visits demonstrate to Trump that there are alternatives if he keeps up the pressure on the Greenland issues until the USMCA trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico is renegotiated.
But these are “shallow gestures against a backdrop of stagnant global growth,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis.
“These visits highlight the severe limits of any ‘pivot’ to China,” she said. “They expose the vulnerability of middle powers, chasing scraps as China’s export deluge overwhelms their industries.”
And it benefits Beijing, supporting the narrative of a broad pivot to China as the world’s “trusted partner” in contrast to Trump’s chaotic tariff policies and his growing list of threats and demands on partners and rivals alike.
“President Trump’s efforts to disconnect the United States from China are also disconnecting the United States from the world,” Quelch added.
STARMER TAKES PROFITS ON VISA, WHISKEY
The deals struck by Western powers during such visits come in exchange for deeper integration with a country that ran a trade surplus the size of the Dutch economy last year, but where consumption is too weak for even its own producers to thrive at home.
On his trip to the world’s second-largest economy, Starmer secured 30-day visa-free access for Britons traveling to China and lower whiskey tariffs, while British drugmaker AstraZeneca unveiled a $15 billion investment in China.
He got nothing but “frank dialogue” on tensions stemming from China’s increasingly assertive stance on Taiwan, its stronger ties to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and a crackdown on the rights of the former British colony of Hong Kong.
British and American politicians who have criticized Starmer’s trip have also aired accusations of espionage and human rights abuses, which Beijing denies.
Similarly, Carney left China with expectations that Beijing would reduce or lower tariffs on canola, lobster, crab and peas, but that sparked threats of 100% tariffs from Trump, who warned Ottawa he would allow Chinese electric vehicles into North America.
And just before Starmer wrapped up his visit to China, Trump warned Britain it was dangerous to do business with Beijing after the prime minister praised the economic benefits of restoring relations with China.
CHINA’S GROWTH IN EXPORTS POSES RISKS FOR THE WEST
China’s imports last year were flat at $2.6 trillion, but were largely driven by energy and commodities from emerging markets rather than the West.
Its trade surplus, however, widened by a fifth to a record $1.2 trillion as its producers responded to Trump’s tariff measures by entering almost every other market in the world at the expense of domestic producers.
Such a growth rate makes China’s trade surplus roughly the size of France’s $3 trillion economy by 2030 and Germany’s $5 trillion economy by 2033.
Its exports to the European Union rose by 8.4% last year, while imports fell by 0.4%. China shipped 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 trying to protect or develop their own manufacturing industries to substantially increase trade integration with China,” said Eswar Prasad, former China director at the International Monetary Fund.
“China hardly provides a safe harbor for countries trying to deal with the negative economic effects of US tariffs,” added Prasad, who now teaches trade policy at Cornell University.
Still, some analysts say, significant trade gains with China may not be as important — or even realistic — for countries like Britain or Canada right now.
Restoring ties may be the best they can get, but that could still be valuable, as the earlier deterioration of relations exposed critical supply chain dependencies on China.
The Asian giant’s trade countermeasures have helped widen the two-way trade imbalances rather than reducing them, analysts said.
The visits by Starmer and Carney are “a propaganda coup for Beijing,” said Noah Barkin, a Europe-China expert at the German Marshall Fund and Rhodium Group, while warning: “This is not a pivot to China. This is about reducing tension with Beijing.”
He added: “No country wants to be in open conflict with the two superpowers at the same time.”
(Additional reporting by Liangping Gao and Kevin Yao in Beijing and David Kirton in Shenzhen; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)