Analysis of: UK citizens to be able to travel to China visa-free, Starmer announces during Beijing visit – UK politics live
The Guardian | January 29, 2026
TL;DR
Starmer's China visit reveals Britain's scramble for new markets as US hegemony destabilizes, with capital's interests driving diplomacy while workers face austerity. The contradiction between seeking Chinese investment and maintaining imperial posturing exposes the limits of 'national interest' rhetoric.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Interconnections
Keir Starmer's visit to China represents a stark illustration of how state diplomacy serves capital accumulation rather than working-class interests. The visit, accompanied by nearly 60 major business representatives, explicitly frames economic engagement as benefiting 'working people at home' through the familiar trickle-down logic that growth for corporations translates to jobs for workers. Yet the actual policy outcomes—visa-free travel for business travelers, reduced whisky tariffs, and intelligence-sharing on migration—primarily benefit export-oriented capital and state security apparatuses rather than addressing the material conditions of British workers facing a cost-of-living crisis. The ideological work performed by both governments is revealing. Xi Jinping's praise for Labour governments' historical 'contributions' to China-UK relations serves to legitimate a continuity of bourgeois internationalism regardless of party label. Meanwhile, Starmer's framing of the relationship shift from 'golden age to ice age' under Conservatives obscures the fundamental continuity: both parties serve capital's need for market access while maintaining nationalist security rhetoric. The concurrent domestic story of WASPI women being denied compensation—justified through bureaucratic impossibility claims while £10bn is deemed unaffordable—reveals the true priorities of the state when workers' interests conflict with fiscal discipline. The visit occurs within a conjuncture of shifting imperialist alignments. As US unpredictability under Trump destabilizes traditional Atlantic partnerships, European powers scramble to hedge through Chinese engagement. Britain, diminished by Brexit and struggling with post-industrial stagnation, seeks Chinese markets and investment while maintaining the pretense of 'raising human rights concerns.' The Andy Burnham subplot—blocked from parliamentary candidacy while citing Reform UK as the threat—illuminates internal Labour contradictions: managing working-class discontent through anti-right rhetoric while pursuing policies indistinguishable from Conservative predecessors.
Class Dynamics
Actors: British capitalist class (represented by 60-strong business delegation), Chinese state-capital nexus, British state (Labour government), British working class (referenced but absent), WASPI women (denied compensation), Small business owners (Turkish barbers invoked in domestic politics), Reform UK (representing petit-bourgeois nationalist reaction)
Beneficiaries: British export-oriented capital (whisky industry, financial services), Chinese manufacturers (small boat engines legitimized as 'legitimate business'), Professional-managerial class (business travelers gaining visa-free access), State security apparatus (intelligence-sharing agreements)
Harmed Parties: WASPI women denied £10bn in compensation, British workers facing austerity, Migrants (subject to intensified surveillance cooperation), Hong Kong democracy activists (Jimmy Lai mentioned only in passing), Uyghur population (human rights 'raised' but deprioritized)
The delegation composition reveals naked class power: nearly 60 business leaders accompany Starmer while no worker representatives or trade unions are mentioned. The state functions as capital's executive committee, negotiating market access while workers' compensation claims are rejected as 'impractical.' China's state-capital fusion allows Xi to speak for both national and class interests simultaneously, while Starmer must perform the ideological separation between 'national interest' and corporate interest even as they coincide.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Britain's £45bn annual exports to China, Post-Brexit market diversification pressures, Chinese position as world's second-largest economy, UK stagnant growth requiring foreign investment, Whisky industry tariff concerns, Small boat manufacturing and migration industry economics
Britain's post-industrial economy increasingly depends on financial services and luxury exports (whisky) rather than manufacturing. The visa agreement primarily benefits capital mobility—business travelers and tourists—rather than labor mobility. The small boats agreement reveals the contradiction of capitalist production: Chinese manufacturers produce 'legitimate' goods that become 'illegitimate' when used by migrants, requiring state intervention to police the commodity chain rather than address root causes of migration.
Resources at Stake: Access to Chinese consumer markets, Chinese investment in British infrastructure, Intelligence and surveillance capabilities, Control over migration routes and methods, British pension funds (WASPI compensation rejected)
Historical Context
Precedents: Lord Macartney's 1793 trade mission (explicitly referenced), David Cameron's 'golden era' China policy (2015), Post-2016 Conservative pivot to China hawkishness, Historical British opium trade impositions on China, Thatcher-era 'no alternative' austerity politics
This visit represents a recurring pattern in declining imperial powers: seeking accommodation with rising powers while maintaining ideological pretenses of superiority. The historical reference to Macartney's 1793 mission—where Britain sought Chinese markets but found 'not much they want to buy'—is telling. Britain's position has shifted from imperial imposer (Opium Wars) to supplicant seeking market access, reflecting the broader decline of Western hegemony and rise of Chinese productive capacity. The neoliberal period's financialization has left Britain dependent on services exports and foreign investment, making such diplomatic missions essential for capital accumulation.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction lies between capital's need for Chinese market access and investment versus the ideological requirements of maintaining Western imperial posturing through human rights rhetoric and security concerns. Starmer must simultaneously court Chinese capital and 'raise concerns' about Hong Kong and Xinjiang, revealing the subordination of human rights to accumulation imperatives.
Secondary: Domestic austerity (WASPI denial) contradicts claims that Chinese trade benefits 'working people', Intelligence-sharing on migration contradicts Labour's humanitarian rhetoric, Anti-Reform UK positioning while pursuing identical pro-capital policies, Burnham's blocked candidacy reveals party democracy contradictions, Security concerns (burner phones) versus economic integration
These contradictions are unlikely to find stable resolution. Capital's drive for Chinese markets will continue to erode human rights posturing, while domestic austerity will intensify working-class discontent that Reform UK exploits. The Labour government may attempt to manage this through nationalist rhetoric ('British people in mind') while pursuing transnational capital's interests. However, the structural contradiction between British workers' material conditions and capital's global accumulation strategies will deepen, potentially creating openings for genuine working-class political alternatives.
Global Interconnections
Starmer's visit must be understood within the broader restructuring of global imperialist relations. The Trump administration's unpredictability—threatening Greenland annexation, criticizing the Chagos agreement—has destabilized the Atlantic alliance that has anchored British foreign policy since 1945. European powers, including Britain, are hedging through Chinese engagement, creating a multipolar competition for market access that benefits Chinese capital's leverage. This diplomatic scramble reveals the hollowness of 'rules-based international order' rhetoric when capital accumulation is at stake. The same week Starmer courts Xi, his government denies WASPI women compensation while finding resources for business delegations. The migration cooperation agreement demonstrates how inter-imperialist competition coexists with shared ruling-class interests in controlling labor mobility. Chinese manufacturers, British border forces, and people smugglers are all positioned within global commodity chains that states seek to regulate in capital's interest—not to address the conditions producing migration but to manage its political consequences.
Conclusion
This episode demonstrates that regardless of party, capitalist states serve capital's interests while deploying 'national interest' rhetoric to legitimate policies harmful to workers. The juxtaposition of Starmer's lavish China reception with WASPI women's denied compensation crystallizes the class character of the state. For working-class movements, this reveals both the bankruptcy of electoral strategies that merely change capital's political managers and the necessity of international solidarity against the shared exploitation workers face in both Britain and China. The contradictions opened by shifting imperialist alignments may create space for alternatives, but only if workers reject the nationalist framing that obscures their common interests against capital in all its national forms.
Suggested Reading
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how capitalist powers compete for markets and spheres of influence directly illuminates Britain's scramble for Chinese market access as US hegemony destabilizes.
- The State and Revolution by V.I. Lenin (1917) The visit demonstrates Lenin's thesis that the state serves as capital's executive committee—Starmer's delegation composition and policy outcomes reveal whose interests the state actually represents.
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's concept of hegemony helps decode how 'national interest' rhetoric and human rights discourse function as ideological legitimation for policies serving capital accumulation.