UK China People to People talks

The magnificent Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich provided a splendid setting for this year’s UK/China People to People dialogue on 17 September. The Wren-designed buildings of the College, facing the towers of Canary Wharf across a Thames River sparkling in September sunshine, presented a fine example of the juxtaposition of old and new which makes London such a special city. Our Chinese guests looked impressed.

The phrase “People to People”, popularly shortened to P2P, covers a wide range of issues that relate to ordinary people’s lives: including health, education, science, tourism, culture and sport. In each area the cooperation between Britain and China is growing exponentially. We can learn from each other. The Chinese were keen to get British help in developing their football sector (watch out Roy Hodgson, they’re setting up 20,000 specialist football schools) and there were several references to the recent BBC documentary which placed Chinese teachers in a British secondary school to showcase China’s approach to teaching maths and sciences. And we are working together on big global health challenges like Anti-Microbial Resistance and obesity. One of the British delegates suggested it was harder to pile on the calories when eating with chopsticks. Having spent many years in Asia I’m not sure I’d agree. At the end of the conference, Chinese and British student observers were able to question the participants. A fifth of foreign students in Britain are from China.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt led the British delegation. He is an appropriate choice: he is particularly interested in the country as his wife is from China. He was joined by Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, Communications and Local Government Secretary Greg Clark, and ministers from a number of Whitehall departments as well as representatives from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The large Chinese delegation was headed by Vice Premier Liu Yandong, the most senior woman in the Chinese government, who had met the PM and Foreign Secretary earlier in the day. Today she has taken part in a football seminar with Michael Owen, and visited a local GP’s clinic, before travelling on from London to visit Wales and some high-tech labs in Oxford over the next few days.

This is one of three annual high level dialogues between the two countries. The Foreign Secretary was in Beijing in August for the Strategic Dialogue, and the Chancellor travels to China with six accompanying Ministers next week, for the Economic and Financial Dialogue. Together they are laying the ground for a very successful State Visit by China’s President Xi Jinping in October, which Madame Liu described as opening a new “golden age” in UK/China relations. Our team in the FCO’s State Visit unit are working hard to deliver that result.