According to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Foreign Secretary has concluded a three-day visit to China and India designed to place the UK inside two of the most consequential diplomatic conversations in the world. The department presented the trip as a combined security and growth mission, with discussions spanning maritime disruption, the war in Ukraine, artificial intelligence and supply-chain resilience. The policy significance lies in the way the government is grouping foreign policy, economic security and technology governance into a single agenda. The FCDO’s position is that engagement with major powers is necessary where UK trade flows, energy costs and strategic supply chains are directly affected.
In Beijing, the FCDO said meetings with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng and Foreign Minister Wang Yi centred on global security and economic stability. The department said the Foreign Secretary pressed the case for reopening the Strait of Hormuz without tolls or charges, preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran and preserving wider Middle East stability. The same meetings were also used to restate the UK’s position on Ukraine. According to the government account, the Foreign Secretary called for an immediate ceasefire and urged China to end economic support for Russia’s illegal invasion.
The China leg also covered Sudan and the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That matters because the FCDO is presenting the UK role as one of selective but active engagement: working with countries where interests align, while raising direct disagreements on security and international law. Rather than treating dialogue with Beijing as a concession, the department is framing it as routine statecraft on issues that cannot be managed through distance alone. That is a clear signal about how ministers want UK foreign policy to be understood in practice.
In Shenzhen, the visit moved from geopolitics to industrial policy. The FCDO said the Foreign Secretary met senior business leaders, investors and technology companies while promoting the UK as an open and competitive destination for investment. The government also used the Shenzhen programme to advance its position on AI governance. After viewing developments in AI and robotics, the Foreign Secretary argued for international standards and international co-operation on AI safety and security, indicating that ministers now see frontier technology as both an innovation issue and a strategic risk issue.
The commercial element was not limited to technology. During the China visit, the UK announced a partnership between Prudential plc and the National Innovation Centre for Ageing to establish local healthy ageing hubs across China. According to the government, the arrangement is intended to support UK health innovation and create commercial opportunities for British healthcare and life sciences firms. In policy terms, that places the visit within a wider Whitehall approach in which overseas engagement is expected to produce diplomatic, security and export outcomes together.
In New Delhi, the agenda shifted towards maritime security, growth and supply-chain resilience. The FCDO said talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar built on the direction set under Vision 2035, with a particular emphasis on keeping trade routes and critical inputs secure from external shocks. The Strait of Hormuz again sat near the top of the brief. The government said the Foreign Secretary highlighted the need to work with India on easing the effect that the waterway’s closure is having on international shipping, underlining how a regional chokepoint now sits directly inside UK economic planning.
That theme carried into the launch of a new Regional Maritime Security Centre of Excellence, which the UK and India presented as a practical step to strengthen maritime security and resilience. The centre gives the visit a more operational dimension, moving the discussion beyond diplomatic alignment and into joint capability and information sharing. Critical minerals were treated with similar urgency. In talks with India’s Minister for Coal and Mines, G Kishan Reddy, the Foreign Secretary launched the Critical Minerals Global Supply Chain Observatory, described by the government as a flagship element of the UK-India Technology Security Initiative.
The FCDO said the Observatory uses AI to provide real-time information on global mineral flows and to identify supply-chain vulnerabilities. India is also committing £1.2 million to establish a satellite observatory campus at the Indian Institute of Technology in Dhanbad with the University of Cambridge, giving the initiative a defined institutional base. Taken together, the China and India stops show how the government is trying to connect diplomacy to domestic resilience. Maritime access, AI safety, mineral supply and exposure to geopolitical shocks are no longer being handled as separate files. In the government’s own presentation of the visit, they now form a single economic security agenda for the UK.