In this articleAZNAZN-GBFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTChina’s President Xi Jinping (R) and Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer shake hands before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on January 29, 2026.Carl Court | Afp | Getty ImagesBEIJING — Countries that shunned China during its trade dispute with the U.S. are now sending their leaders to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping — and are keen to strike business deals.At least five national leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, have visited Xi in January alone. Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi is due to make the trip next week — the first by a South American leader since U.S. President Donald Trump captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife in early January. The Canadian and British leaders’ trips are the first in at least eight years, while a visit by Ireland’s prime minister on Jan. 5 was the first in 14 years. China had closed its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic and only reopened them in earnest in early 2023.”These visits reflect managed, selective resets under rising U.S. policy uncertainty, rather than a strategic pivot to China,” said Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.”Keeping communication channels open with Beijing is increasingly seen as preferable to disengagement,” she said, “particularly as the gains from selective resets with China become more visible, and U.S. policy has grown less predictable.”Since taking office 12 months ago, Trump has wielded tariffs not just on China but a slew of U.S. trading partners. In recent months, he’s increased efforts to ramp up U.S. influence over Venezuela, Iran and Greenland. It’s an opportunity for Beijing, which has sought to portray itself as not only a partner for developing countries but also as a stabilizing force for the world. “Maintaining distance from the United States indicates that these countries value ties with China’s large economy,” Cui Shoujun, an international studies professor at Renmin University of China, said in a phone interview Thursday. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.European and other countries may still need to align with the U.S. on security issues, but they are now increasing economic engagement, Cui said. Facilitating business dealsLarge business delegations often accompany national leaders when making state visits. Nearly 60 British companies and cultural organizations sent representatives to accompany the U.K. prime minister on his China trip. British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca used the state visit to announce plans to invest $15 billion in China through 2030.Similarly, during Carney’s visit, Canada agreed to cut tariffs on a limited number of China-made electric cars to 6.1% from 100%, in exchange for lower Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola seeds. Global businesses have also long been keen to sell to China’s large consumer market, the second-largest in the world. For their part, Chinese leaders have urged visiting nations to create fair environments for Chinese businesses operating or investing locally. Many Chinese companies, such as electric car m …
