UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer headed to China for a visit that will see him walking a tricky tightrope.
Starmer wants to rekindle Britain’s flagging economy, especially as Washington becomes more unpredictable. But he is loath to antagonize the White House, Politico reported. A further complication is that his government plans to heighten scrutiny of Chinese espionage, the Financial Times noted.
The West is courting China — the leaders of Canada, Finland, France, and Germany have also either visited recently or will soon — but a former Canadian diplomat jailed by China warned that drawing close to an authoritarian, expansionist Beijing also has risks. “[If] your long-term partner [becomes] abusive,” he told Semafor, you shouldn’t “hop into bed with another serial abuser.”
