U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron held talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday afternoon on the first day of a major trade mission aimed at deepening commercial ties.
Mr. Cameron and Mr. Wen sat down for talks in Beijing's Great Hall of the People following a series of ministerial talks earlier this week covering economic, energy and educational issues.
After a brief welcoming ceremony, Mr. Wen thanked Mr. Cameron for prioritizing U.K.-China relations in his first months of office and pledged to push "forward the friendship and cooperation between our two countries." Mr. Cameron said he was glad to be "back in China and to be back with such a big delegation of ministers and business people."
"My new government does highly value the relationship between Britain and China," he said. Mr. Cameron is leading the U.K.'s largest-ever business delegation to the Asian giant as he seeks to deepen ties and help push British business interests. The prime minister has said he hopes the two countries can double bilateral trade to some $100 billion over the next five years.
Earlier, the two governments announced that China and the U.K. will study cross-listing of exchange-traded funds in each other's markets. In a joint statement, the governments also welcomed "the approval" of a planned Chinese securities joint venture between Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and China's Guolian Securities Co., a deal the two firms signed in September. The agreements came after talks chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
China's regulators have yet to allow Chinese fund-management companies to issue exchange-traded funds under the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors program that would allow Chinese investors to invest in foreign index-linked funds directly in China. No foreign ETFs so far are allowed to list in China yet either.
Mr. Osborne said the British government would welcome more investment from China, including from sovereign-wealth funds. And he said the two countries have "huge potential" to boost trade and economic ties.
In a round of television interviews earlier, Mr. Cameron said his country's ties with China are strong enough for the two sides to discuss issues like human rights. He said the U.K.-Chinese relationship is strong "at the very highest level."
When asked if he would press human-rights issues with the Chinese leadership, he said that Britain has "a really high level dialogue with China on all sorts of issues ranging from the economy and trade and business and, of course, human rights. That is how it should be. Of course we shouldn't be lecturing and hectoring but it is right we have a dialogue on these things."
Mr. Cameron said he didn't believe trade deals would be jeopardized by speaking forthrightly on human rights. U.K. officials have said Mr. Cameron will raise human-rights issues in his meeting, but that they will be tackled in a "measured way."
The U.K. government has already confirmed its ambassador will attend the Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo later this year. The prize was awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, angering the government in Beijing, which has lobbied European governments not to attend the ceremony. Mr. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December on subversion charges after coauthoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China, which was widely circulated online and signed by thousands.
Mr. Cameron arrived in Beijing Tuesday morning and made his first stop at a local store of U.K supermarket chain Tesco, which is expanding its presence in China with an investment of £2 billion ($3.23 billion) during the next five years.
Tesco Executive Director Lucy Neville-Rolfe, who is part of the more than 40-strong business delegation on the China trip, said the country "represents a huge opportunity for growth, with large numbers of consumers and a government which thinks that expanding internal consumption is important."
Mr. Cameron later visited a 600-year old temple in Beijing. His government had set improving commercial ties with India and China as a key policy goal when it took office in May. The prime minister led a large delegation to India in July.