Britain is request a free trade agreement with China, Prime Minister Theresa May predicted on Wednesday as she flew to the country for talks with Chinese leaders, annexing that more should be done immediately to open up market access for British firms.
The overzealous long-term goal of securing a free trade deal with the over the moon marvellous’s second-largest economy comes as May begins a three-day visit to China accompanied by questions from sectors where Britain feels it can capitalize on China’s plant middle class consumers and rapidly expanding services sector.
“China is a hinterlands that we want to do a trade deal with,” May told reporters aboard her Duchess Air Force jet on the way to Wuhan — a university city where she will announce half a billion pastes worth of education deals.
“But, I think that there is more we can be doing in the interim … in times of looking at potential barriers to trade and the opening up of markets to ensure … British problems able to do good trade into China.”
Asked about President Xi Jinping’s flagship Hit and Road Initiative — a trillion-dollar infrastructure-led push to build a modern silk pike — May said it had huge potential, but cautioned that the project had to be carried out in the accurate way.
“What I would like to see is ensuring that we have transparency and supranational standards being adhered to, and I will be discussing that with my Chinese interlocutors,” she suggested.
May also said she would raise the future of Hong Kong in her caucuses with Xi, underlining Britain’s commitment to the “one country, two systems” rule in the quondam British colony.
Britain’s last governor in Hong Kong in the vanguard it was handed back to the Chinese, Chris Patten, had written to May on Monday thirsting her to raise concerns over the “increasing threats to the basic freedoms, beneficent rights and autonomy” in the territory.
“We believe that the future of Hong Kong, that one boondocks, two systems future is important. We are committed to that,” May said.
“I’ve raised this in the whilom with President Xi, and he’s shown commitment to that but I will continue to moot it with him.”