Foreign Secretary’s meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, February 2024

The Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference.

In line with the Government’s ‘protect, align, and engage’ approach to China, as set out in the Integrated Review Refresh, the Foreign Secretary raised a number of issues important to the UK national interest.

To support constructive engagement between the UK and China, the Foreign Ministers agreed that the UK and China should continue engagement across a range of areas.

This includes trade links; building on our existing cultural ties and links between our peoples; and working together to tackle climate change.

The Foreign Secretary urged China to use its influence on Iran to pressure the Houthis over their actions in the Red Sea. 

He further stressed that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine threatens the rules based international system, which is designed to keep us all safe.

The Foreign Secretary also took this opportunity to unambiguously set out the UK’s position across a number of areas of disagreement, including on human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. He raised the case of British Parliamentarians sanctioned by China and reiterated his call for the release of British national Jimmy Lai.