Yvette Cooper vowed to continue raising the case of imprisoned British tycoon Jimmy Lai with Chinese officials amid opposition calls for her to secure his release.
The foreign secretary said that a “really important” working relationship had been established between the UK and China after years of frosty relations as she capped a two-day visit to the country.
But she was under pressure to take a harder line with Beijing over concerns about national security and human rights issues, including the detention of media tycoon Mr Lai.
Asked whether she had insisted on Mr Lai’s release and how firmly she had pressed his case in talks with her counterpart Wang Yi, Ms Cooper said: “I’ve raised this and will continue to raise Jimmy Lai because this is a very important case to us. Our case remains we want to see his release as soon as possible, he’s a very elderly man. And I will be talking to his family and will continue to talk to his family.”
Ahead of the foreign secretary’s visit, Keir Starmer’s government also faced calls to challenge Beijing more forcefully on the reported human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.
Asked whether she had voiced objections to their plight, Ms Cooper said: “Yes, and I’ve raised freedom of religion as well.”
The UK government sees engagement with the Asian economic giant as key to protecting Britain’s security in a period of heightened global volatility but insists it will challenge Beijing where it must.
Meeting Chinese vice president Han Zheng for a discussion on global security on Tuesday, Ms Cooper had said that the “international rules-based order” was in London and Beijing’s “shared interest”.
Asked whether she believed China was respecting that order, the secretary said: “China is a member of the P5, the permanent five members of the UN security council, and we have to engage on these global security issues with China. We’ve talked about the importance of the rules-based international order, so too has China.”
She said there were “many areas where we have shared interests”, including freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the critical maritime trade route that was closed by Iran after it was attacked by the US and Israel in February.
Following a day of bilateral talks in Beijing, Ms Cooper flew to Shenzhen, a major technology hub, where she met the city’s party secretary Jin Lei and toured a laboratory of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society, where she was shown how the technology was being used in healthcare and power grids.
She said she had raised safety issues surrounding AI in talks with both Mr Wang and Mr Han and sought to make the case for global standards safeguarding the development of the technology. “What I want to see is global standards on AI security and safety involving the UN,” she said.
“I think this reflects the approach we’ve taken over very many years on nuclear security, where we have international nuclear standards,” she added.
“Nuclear standards is an area where historically we worked with China as well as with other countries on standards. We had differences of view, but also did have co-operation on those areas as well.”
Ms Cooper travelled from Shenzhen to Delhi, India, on Wednesday evening ahead of talks on global security, including escalation around Hormuz, with her counterpart S Jaishankar and other leaders.
