BEIJING—British Prime Minister Tony Blair has held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao and is to oversee the signing of a raft of important trade and investment deals before leaving for India.
The bilateral element to his two-day trip follows the hosting Monday of the annual EU-China summit which Blair attended as part of Britain’s turn at the six-month rotating presidency of the 25-nation bloc.
His visit has been boosted by the settlement Monday of a Sino-EU trade row that has left 80 million Chinese-made garments piled up in European ports, unable to be delivered to shops under a quota pact agreed in June.
During talks with Wen, Blair is scheduled to review the programmes of task forces set up by the two sides during his last visit in 2003 to facilitate bilateral trade and investment, finance, energy, education and culture.
Britain in the largest European investor in China, pumping 12 billion dollars into the country by the end of last year and there are 4,300 British-Sino joint ventures.
British exports to China in 2004 soared 30 percent year-on-year to 2.4 billion pounds (4.34 billion dollars), and Blair is to oversee a host of fresh trade deals by British and European companies.
According to British Ambassador to China Christopher Hum, the deals to be signed are worth in the region of 2.5 billion dollars. They are expected to include yet another contract by a Chinese airline for planes from Europe’s Airbus consortium.
“We’ve done our work in convincing an airline to buy our aircraft,” Airbus President Laurence Barron told reporters, but refused to identify what type of plane or which airline was involved. Blair’s spokesman said: “It’s not an insubstantial amount of money”.
Barron said in July the company expects to sell 1,800 aircraft in the coming two decades to China, including at least 200 of the A380 superjumbos. Other deals set to be inked involve Rolls Royce engines, and Standard Chartered Bank taking a stake in Bohai Bank, a new Chinese lender, Hum was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
Travelling with Blair are 40-odd top executives from British and European companies such as Airbus, BP, British American Tobacco, Deutsche Post, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls Royce and Royal Dutch Shell.
Blair’s visit also has a strong cultural element with the likes of prima ballerina Darcy Bussell, football great Sir Bobby Robson, track star Colin Jackson and architect Sir Norman Foster giving “master classes” in Beijing. A bilateral agreement is expected to be penned on cultural exchanges between the two governments.
On Wednesday Blair will be in New Delhi, swapping notes with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi, the champion of non-violence who led India out of the British Empire.
Travelling with him — as in Beijing — will be European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
In India, Blair and his EU partners will endorse a so-called “action plan” and a political declaration intended to signal a joint commitment to “enhanced engagement”.
“The European Union and India know and show that they matter to each other more than ever before,” said Barroso, adding that the action plan should prompt a dialogue on security and the environment, plus more trade and investment.—Agencies