David Cameron came to China, leading a six months’ old coalition government and a large delegation of British business figures, hoping to do business.
He left realising that achieving big export deals with China is a slow and difficult process, even though he spoke softly on human rights and made no gaffes during his trip.
n a speech on Tuesday, he hailed new business worth billions of pounds, but the export deals announced on the trip amounted to less than £1bn with a Rolls-Royce deal for 16 new jet engines accounting for £750m of a total no higher than £900m.
Other big deals that had been expected – one between BP and CNOOC of China and another with Diageo – did not come off, Downing Street officials said, because the Chinese political establishment was not ready to sign even though the British companies had dipped their pens in the ink.
Officials said they hoped the deals would still go ahead in due course, but it would be a slower process than initially expected.
The strategy on the trip, one senior British official said, was to do business while also raising issues of concern to British people, especially human rights, in a “sensitive and measured” way.
This, Mr Cameron did assiduously during his visit, but he did not raise specific human rights cases in his formal meetings with Wen Jiabao, premier, and Hu Jintao, president.
It is understood that some specific cases of human rights abuse, such as the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, were raised at a banquet on Tuesday evening, but Downing Street would not confirm that such a discussion took place, nor whose name the prime minister raised if he did raise the issue, nor what the response was.
Read more at Financial Times
God benefit people who guide on their own.
Arrive on every person and permit God witness your progress from just about every factors!
Permit the unpleasant affair go.
Posted by: Jordan Trunner | 11/11/2010 at 12:50 AM