UK consumers queue on Oxford Street to purchase blind boxes from Pop Mart, while scientists from AstraZeneca PLC work in Chinese biotech labs developing next-generation cell therapies. Sino-British commercial cooperation is cutting through the fog of geopolitics, returning to the fundamental principle of mutual benefit.
At the CEO roundtable during the Beijing Sino-British Business Forum, Wang Ning, founder of Pop Mart International Group Limited, met with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and announced that London would be the location for its European headquarters, with plans to open seven new physical stores in the UK. Almost simultaneously, British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC revealed an ambitious investment plan in China worth approximately 100 billion yuan. These moves, alongside other two-way investment projects valued at hundreds of millions of pounds, were described by Downing Street as "tangible benefits" facilitated by the visit.
A Trillion-Dollar Trade Foundation On January 28, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer made an official visit to China, marking the first visit by a British prime minister in eight years. The visit is set against the backdrop of a substantial bilateral economic relationship. Data from China's General Administration of Customs and the UK's Office for National Statistics show that bilateral goods trade reached $103.7 billion, with service trade expected to exceed $30 billion, and two-way investment stock nearing $68 billion.
The delegation accompanying the visit comprised executives and representatives from over 50 leading British companies and institutions, spanning key sectors such as finance, energy, pharmaceuticals, and creative industries. The two sides signed multiple trade and investment cooperation documents and agreed to restart three high-level dialogue mechanisms within the year, including the Strategic Dialogue and the Economic and Financial Dialogue. These actions establish a more stable institutional framework for long-term cooperation, with a core aim being to address the business community's urgent need for a "stable and predictable environment," thereby removing obstacles and injecting certainty for future commercial collaboration.
Notably, the institutional consensus reached during the visit has already spurred specific corporate partnerships. In trade facilitation, JD.com and the China-Britain Business Council signed a strategic cooperation agreement at the forum, aiming to leverage JD's e-commerce ecosystem and logistics network to help more British brands efficiently reach Chinese consumers. Concurrently, its European retail platform, Joybuy, is accelerating its localisation strategy in the UK. In green energy investment, according to a UK government announcement, Chinese energy storage company Hithium plans to invest £200 million in the UK, a project expected to create 300 jobs and directly support the UK's development of new energy storage capacity. These examples demonstrate that the complementary nature of the Chinese and British economies is rapidly translating into new cooperative gains in both trade and investment.
International media have keenly observed this pragmatic shift. The Guardian, citing analysts, reported that British businesses widely hope to deepen cooperation with China in areas like financial services, clean energy, high-end manufacturing, and education, noting that stable, predictable bilateral relations help boost commercial confidence. Bloomberg pointed out that China is close to overtaking Germany as the UK's largest single import source, with British public recognition of Chinese products continuing to rise. Celine Tang, Head of Retail and E-commerce at the China-Britain Business Council, stated that in the UK market, consumers welcome any excellent brand that offers high quality and good value. Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao suggested that the Prime Minister leading a delegation of over 50 major company executives itself "fully reflects the British side's expectations for deepening bilateral economic and trade relations." India's Business Standard more directly highlighted the core message of the trip: "China is crucial for the UK."
Two-Way Engagement Accelerates Corporate choices most直观地 reflect the underlying logic of cooperation. Pop Mart International Group Limited's decision to base its European headquarters in London, with plans to add seven new stores in the UK—including in Birmingham, Cardiff, and an Oxford Street flagship—alongside a planned expansion of 20 stores across Europe, will create over 150 jobs in the UK.
As early as 2022, Pop Mart opened its first European store on Shaftesbury Avenue in central London. By June 2025, the company had opened 18 stores in Europe, covering key markets like the UK, France, Germany, and Italy. A Citigroup research report indicated that the UK is one of the overseas markets with the highest recognition for the LABUBU IP, with 49% of Pop Mart purchasers in the UK aged 18-34, showing a clear trend towards younger consumers.
Wang Ning, Founder and CEO of Pop Mart International Group Limited, stated that London, as a global hub for creative ecosystems, is a crucial choice for the brand to establish roots in Europe and deepen its global market presence. Leveraging the European headquarters, Pop Mart will further integrate global creative resources, recruit outstanding artists in Europe for deep collaboration, continuously explore IP creative value, and promote the exchange and integration of Chinese and international pop cultures. This mutually beneficial cooperative ecosystem dispels the misconception of "one-sided benefit" and explains why the British side explicitly stated that "not engaging with China is a dereliction of duty"—against the backdrop of a sluggish global economic recovery, Sino-British cooperation is not an "option" but a "necessity."
Almost concurrently with Pop Mart's announcement, British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC unveiled a significant plan to increase its commitment to the Chinese market. During the visit, AstraZeneca PLC clearly announced an additional investment of $15 billion (approximately 100 billion yuan) in China by 2030, focusing on expanding pharmaceutical manufacturing and R&D systems, particularly enhancing R&D capabilities in cell therapy and radioconjugates, and promoting the diversification of its product pipeline.
Despite recent adjustments in the global pharmaceutical market, which saw China's share of AstraZeneca's global business decline from a peak of 25% to 12%, China remains its second-largest global market and a core base for R&D innovation and capacity expansion. The Financial Times commented that AstraZeneca's increased investment essentially recognises the potential of the Chinese market, its R&D capabilities, and its open environment, also reflecting the cooperative logic of a "powerful partnership" between China and the UK in the biopharmaceutical sector.
Sino-British Investment Focused on Complementarity According to China's Ministry of Commerce, as of July 2025, UK-invested enterprises established in China had exceeded 13,000, with actual investment exceeding $35 billion. The investment logic of Chinese enterprises is also changing, shifting from early "financial acquisitions of iconic assets" to "deep embedding in local supply chains."
Against the dual backdrop of Brexit and carbon neutrality, Chinese investment in the UK is transitioning from traditional asset operations to a new phase centred on deep industrial collaboration. Between 2024 and 2025, Chinese enterprises precisely targeted three key UK regions—the West Midlands, North East England & Yorkshire, and Scotland—becoming key drivers of local industrial transformation and job growth through technology integration, localised operations, and green investment.
In the West Midlands, Chinese-invested companies like London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) are combining China's advantages in scale manufacturing with local automotive engineering talent to help build the UK's "battery belt" and electric future. In Northern England, Jingye Group's continued investment in British Steel has stabilised the traditional industrial base, while AESC's gigafactory in Sunderland acts as an "industrial anchor" driving the green transition. In Scotland, Mingyang Smart Energy's announcement of a £1.5 billion investment to build an offshore wind turbine base aims to combine local offshore wind resources with Chinese industrial chain capabilities to jointly establish a global leadership position in floating wind power. These investments, by creating thousands of local jobs, transferring key technologies, and building local supply chains, represent an upgrade from "capital export" to "value co-creation," opening sustainable new space for bilateral economic and trade cooperation.
These cases reveal a clear path: through job creation, technology transfer, and supply chain localisation, Chinese capital is alleviating geopolitical concerns via "collaborative embedding," aligning with the UK's "re-industrialisation" strategy. In the current context of global industrial chain restructuring, this cooperation paradigm, which focuses on industrial needs and downplays sovereignty sensitivities, may open sustainable new space for Sino-British and even China-EU economic and trade relations.
These investments create tangible employment opportunities. The UK government assesses that market access breakthroughs facilitated by the visit in sectors like life sciences, legal services, whisky, and automobiles are expected to generate approximately £2.3 billion in additional export opportunities for UK businesses over the next five years. In the first three quarters of this fiscal year alone, the UK government supported £1.8 billion in exports to China. Correspondingly, as the UK's third-largest trading partner, China directly supports around 370,000 jobs in the UK.
From Corporate Cooperation to Systematic Future Growth The stance of Mark Tucker, Group Chairman of HSBC, a key participant in Sino-British financial cooperation, is representative. He stated that a stable and balanced UK-China economic relationship promotes growth, employment, and investment, benefiting both nations. He noted that the Prime Minister's visit highlights the significant potential for deepening international trade, finance, and innovation cooperation between the world's sixth and second-largest economies. With China's market continuing to open and based on positive progress from the 2025 UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue and Financial Services Summit, the financial services sector will play an important role.
The wave of cooperation spurred by the Prime Minister's visit is evident not only in corporate-level "two-way engagement" but also extends to multi-faceted synergy between governments, local authorities, and institutions, forming a comprehensive, multi-level cooperative ecosystem that cultivates new growth space for Sino-British economic relations. At the Sino-British Business Forum held during the visit, Suzhou New District and the China-Britain Business Council signed a cooperation agreement to jointly build an "Sino-British Economic and Trade Cooperation Innovation Port." This cooperation breaks from traditional project investment and trade models, signalling the start of building a systematic, platform-based innovation ecosystem community, establishing a vital bridge for SME cooperation between the two countries.
Local-level cooperation is also warming rapidly. In Scotland, oil exports to China showed significant growth in 2025, becoming a new highlight for regional economic growth. In the Qianhai Free Trade Zone in Shenzhen, 59 UK companies invested $560 million in the first ten months of 2025, concentrated in fintech and professional services, demonstrating the attraction of China's open economy for UK quality service enterprises. This cooperative pattern of "national-level stage-setting, local-level performance, and enterprise-level implementation" makes the foundation of Sino-British cooperation more solid.
The UK Prime Minister's visit is a prominent example of the global "wave of visits to China" in early 2026. Entering 2026, China has successively hosted heavyweight state guests including South Korean President, Irish Prime Minister, Canadian Prime Minister, Finnish Prime Minister, UK Prime Minister, and Uruguayan President, holding consultations on areas such as bilateral trade, green energy, and technological innovation. Le Monde pointed out that China, as the world's second-largest economy, remains an active participant and important contributor to global governance, making cooperation with China imperative.
The common demand underpinning these密集 visits is essentially an urgent search for "certainty." The certainty offered by China includes its vast market and the world's most comprehensive industrial system, covering 41 major industrial categories, 207 medium categories, and 666 minor categories, capable of providing stable support for global industrial and supply chains. Therefore, the essence of this "wave of visits" is a rational choice by capital and industry for the most efficient global allocation of resources.