On 30 June 2025, Chinese Ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang was invited to the Net Zero Finance Innovation Summit of City Week 2025.

Ambassador Zheng pointed out in his speech that there has been much discussion about the Chinese economy. The truth is, in the face of a challenging external environment, especially the rise of unilateralism and trade bullying from the US, China’s economy continues to demonstrate strong resilience and maintains an upward trajectory. In the first quarter of this year, China’s GDP grew by 5.4% year-on-year. With all the measures that it has rolled out to stimulate domestic demand, consolidate the real estate sector and alleviate local government debt, China has full confidence in achieving its annual growth target of around 5%. At the same time, China’s economy has become smarter, greener and more open to the outside world.

He emphasized that to further grow the China-UK economic partnership, the key lies in resisting and scaling back the Cold-War mentality of treating China as a challenge, even threat, to the UK. The fact is, strengthening cooperation with China, be it in trade and investment, financial services, technology, or education, will only support the UK in achieving its economic growth objective, reducing its cost of living, and accelerating its net-zero transition. Chinese businesses do not come to the UK to destroy the local economy or harm the UK’s national security. Instead, they have come to grow with the UK economy, create jobs and tax revenues, and seek win-win results. China highly commends the contributions by foreign businesses and embraces businesses from around the world, including the UK. Likewise, the UK should treat Chinese businesses in a fair, just and non-discriminatory manner. Chinese businesses want to see more clarity, consistency, and pragmatism in UK policies. They don’t want to see the UK draw an ideological line in commerce, overstretch the concept of national security, or allow any third country to interfere in normal China-UK commercial activities.

China and the UK have held a series of dialogues and cooperation mechanisms, including the Economic and Financial Dialogue, Energy Dialogue, Climate Dialogue, and Environment Dialogue. The two sides need to work closely together to turn the policy outcomes of these dialogues into concrete actions and tangible results. China will work with the UK to follow the principles of mutual respect and mutual benefit, stay open-minded, and actively unlock the potentials of China-UK cooperation, to benefit the sustainable development of our two countries and the world at large.