British citizens will now be able to travel to China for 30 days without needing to get a visa following a deal between Sir Keir Starmer and President Xi Jinping.
Thursday 29 January 2026 22:31, UK
British citizens will now be able to travel to China without needing to get a visa, the government has confirmed.
Sir Keir Starmer discussed proposals to introduce this with his counterpart Xi Jinping earlier today, as part of his five-day visit to Asia.
A little earlier today, the Chinese government said it would “actively” consider this – but it’s now been confirmed.
It means Britons will be able to travel to China without a visa for up to 30 days.
This will bring the UK into line with almost 50 other countries, such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany.
Starmer: ‘UK businesses have been crying out for better access to China’
The change will apply to those visiting for tourism, and for business.
Currently, a visa to China costs a British citizen costs more than £100 and takes about a week, though this can be expedited if they pay more.
The two countries have also agreed to conduct a “feasibility study” into whether to enter negotiations towards a bilateral service agreement, which would establish clear and legally binding rules for UK firms trading in China.
Starmer said: “As one of the world’s economic powerhouses, businesses have been crying out for ways to grow their footprints in China.
“We’ll make it easier for them to do so – including via relaxed visa rules for short-term travel – supporting them to expand abroad, all while boosting growth and jobs at home.”
China is the world’s second-largest economy and the UK’s third-biggest trading partner.
The UK and China have also signed a new partnership, which will improve market access to China, and grow private-public partnerships in the healthcare, education and skills sectors, as well as in professional, financial and legal services.
Continue scrolling down for more news and analysis from Starmer’s trip to China, including:
That’s all for tonight.
But please do join us again in the morning for the latest from Westminster.
By Alexandra Rogers, political correspondent
Reform’s choice of candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election is a controversial one.
Matt Goodwin, an academic turned GB News presenter and commentator, has been accused of holding divisive views on immigration and race – including that “it takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’.”
But, according to sources close to Reform, there are two key reasons why he has been chosen to fight for the seat.
The first is that it could act as a “helpful bone” to the right of the party.
A number of Tory defections to Reform, have left some in the party thinking that taking in the old guard of Tories rejected by the electorate damages their brand as disruptive newcomers.
The second, sources say, is that the party’s strategy is to defeat Labour by targeting 30% of the vote by focusing on white working-class communities that live in the constituency, mainly in Gorton and the wards in Tameside.
“If Andy Burnham had run, they wouldn’t have bothered to bring out the big guns,” says one Reform insider.
The issue is that Reform UK is led by the big guns – not just Nigel Farage, but head of policy, Zia Yusuf.
And as more enter the tent, could the influence of those already in it start to wane?
“Zia definitely wants a seat – 100%,” the source says.
“As of two weeks ago, he saw himself as the next chancellor and then PM after Nigel. What was an easy toboggan run now looks like black ice through a forest.
“His relative influence is being diluted by more and more heavyweights coming in.
“His challenge is that if he stands and loses in a by-election, he’s toast.”
The chair of the Women Against State Pensions Inequality – Waspi – campaign group has hit out at the government’s “totally immoral” decision to reject paying compensation to women hit by changes to the state pension age.
Speaking to the Politics Hub, Angela Madden said she felt “very let down”, particularly by the Labour leadership, some of whom expressed their support for the group’s cause before getting into government.
“I feel very let down. I think this government, although it says it keeps to its manifesto, it certainly doesn’t keep to the history and theory and base of the Labour Party,” she told Matt Barbet.
“I mean, the government can actually do what it likes. It proves that every day.
“And because it’s the government, it thinks it’s the right thing to do, and it thinks it has a mandate – but what they’ve done to us is immoral, totally immoral.”
You can watch the full interview here:
Labour MP Rebecca Long-Bailey says she is “extremely disappointed” about the government’s decision to reject paying compensation to women hit by changes to the state pension age.
The Women Against State Pensions Inequality – Waspi – campaign has lobbied extensively after claiming they were not given sufficient warning of the state pension age for women being lifted to be in line with men from 60 to 65.
Having rejected this claim in December 2024, the government announced a review in November last year, when it would consider new evidence.
However, Pensions minister Pat McFadden announced the government’s restated rejection in the Commons on Thursday afternoon, saying such a compensation scheme would not be “practical” or “fair”.
Speaking to Matt Barbet on the Politics Hub, Long-Bailey said: “I think they’re in the wrong place on this. They’ve let these women down yet again.
“It was clear that the ombudsman’s report found that there was maladministration and that an injustice had occurred, and the ombudsman was clear that compensation should be offered by the government.
“The government’s next step should have been to consult with the women themselves about what that package would look like, not to effectively gaslight them, which is what happened today. So I’m extremely disappointed in the government.
“They’ve got the opportunity to turn this round and do the right thing morally. I just hope they take that opportunity.”
The family of former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Lord Jim Wallace has tonight announced that he has died.
The 71-year-old served as the leader of the Lib Dems in Scotland from 1992 to 2005.
As part of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition, he served as Scotland’s first-ever deputy first minister under Labour’s Donald Dewar, becoming acting first minister after his death.
He returned to his role as deputy under Dewar’s successor, Henry McLeish.
Lord Jim served as a Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland from 1983 to 2001 and a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Orkney from 1999 to 2007 – when he was made a life peer in the House of Lords.
His family said he died as a result of complications after surgery, after undergoing what has been described as a scheduled but major procedure at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on Thursday.
His wife, Rosie Wallace, said: “The family are very shocked by Jim’s death. It was all so sudden. He was still incredibly active in a whole host of areas.
She added: “Jim was still going up and down to London and participating fully in the House of Lords. He was singing in the Dunblane Cathedral choir over the festive period, and he was so looking forward to spending even more time with his grandchildren.”
It would be right for China’s President Xi Jinping to have a state visit to the UK, if it served the country’s national interest, a minister has said.
Asked about it by Matt Barbet on the Politics Hub, justice minister Jake Richards said: “Well, I think if President Xi wants to come and if we think that that would serve our national interest, then yes.
Asked if it was going to happen, he said: “Well, I don’t know, that’s above my pay grade, I’m afraid.
“But look, we’re not the only country that is engaging with this on this diplomatic mission, with the Chinese.
“We’ve had the German president out in China, Mark Carney from Canada out there recently on a bilateral trip as well.
“So I think this is part of a realistic but ambitious diplomatic relationship with.”
It’s time for the Politics Hub on Sky News – which you can watch live in the stream above.
Tonight’s presenter is Matt Barbet, and he is joined on the panel by the columnist and broadcaster Emily Sheffield, and Labour MP for Brent East, Dawn Butler.
There are also interviews with junior justice minister, Jake Richards, and Angela Madden, chair of Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign – following the news that the government has rejected its call for compensation.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour MP for Salford and chair of the APPG on State Pension Inequality for Women, will also be on the show.
An unpredictable Trump administration has presented China with an opportunity to win new friends, making Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to Beijing a “time for gifts”, according to a former senior diplomat.
Former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing, Kerry Brown, says the Chinese are “not dismissive” of the UK and have “rolled out the red carpet” for the prime minister.
“This is a time of gifts, really,” he said, speaking to Jonathan Samuels on Sky News.
“I mean, China knows it can win new friends, or at least new alliances or deep alliances because everyone is wondering what to do about Washington.
“With Greenland and the issues with Europe recently, I think they see there’s nothing in it for them to be hardline on lots of things which they may have been in the past, because actually it looks good that they’re being a bit more benign and friendly now.
“So I think it’s a win for them.”
Is history repeating itself?
A prime minister barely a year in office visiting China, while back home there’s talk of plots, coups and a member of his cabinet manoeuvring against him.
No, not Sir Keir Starmer in Beijing and Shanghai this week, as Labour MPs speculate about how long he’ll last and whether Wes Streeting is poised to make a move.
But it has all happened before.
In August 2008, amid dismal poll ratings and some Labour MPs calling for him to quit, I accompanied Gordon Brown on a visit to Beijing during the Olympic Games.
He’d succeeded Tony Blair as PM only 14 months earlier, but after bottling calling a snap general election in autumn 2007, everything started to go wrong.
Rows over political donations, bad local election results, by-election defeats… sound familiar?
But there was worse: a would-be assassin inside his cabinet appeared to have pulled the trigger.
Just weeks before Brown’s China trip, in a hard-hitting article in The Guardian, foreign secretary David Miliband demanded a “radical new phase” in government policy.
Without mentioning Brown once in the article, he called on the government to be “more humble about our shortcomings, but more compelling about our achievements” and gain a new relationship with voters.
Hours later, at a news conference, he declined several times to rule out a leadership bid, said such talk was “a never ending game” and criticised the media’s “obsession with the personality cult”.
On his way to China, Brown stopped off in Afghanistan, where at a news conference in Kabul alongside then president Hamid Karzai he faced a barrage of questions about Miliband being after his job.
He answered my question by insisting he was “getting on with the business of government”, a phrase he used many times. But then Karzai lightened the mood with a witty quip.
“Plotting in the cabinet is not new,” he told me. “It happens in Afghanistan too… But not to me.” Laughter all round. Even from the beleaguered British prime minister.
The run-up to Beijing 2008 had seen Labour suffer two disastrous by-election defeats, at Crewe and Nantwich in May, and Glasgow East in July. Sound familiar?
At least Sir Keir has only suffered one – so far – since becoming PM, in Runcorn and Helsby last year. But Gorton and Denton on February 26 doesn’t look too promising.
After Crewe and Nantwich, Graham Stringer – a critic of just about every Labour leader since Blair – said it was time for a senior cabinet figure to mount a leadership bid to save the party from disaster at the next election.
Another veteran still in the Commons, left-winger John McDonnell, said Brown’s “re-launch” after the local elections had been a disaster.
“Things are just going from bad to worse for the government,” he said.
Stringer and McDonnell criticising the Labour leadership? Some things never change.
But Blairite MPs were agitating too. Ultra-loyalists Siobhan McDonagh, still an MP, and Joan Ryan were sacked as government whips after calling for a leadership election.
Then, after a torrid summer, in his 2008 Labour conference speech Brown declared: “I’m all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you, this is no time for a novice.”
Labour, naturally, claimed he was referring to the youthful Tory leader David Cameron. But Labour MPs were in no doubt that it was intended as a slap down aimed at David Miliband.
At the Olympics in Beijing, some Western leaders – including France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel – boycotted the opening ceremony in protest against a Chinese crackdown in Tibet.
Brown didn’t go either, but insisted he was never going to go in the first place. Instead, with wife Sarah and their two young sons, he was there for the closing ceremony when London picked up the Olympic baton for the 2012 games in London.
Critics claimed it was a U-turn by the prime minister. A prime ministerial U-turn? History really is repeating itself.
Kemi Badenoch has criticised the prime minister after his spokesperson refused to rule out the possibility of a state visit to the UK by China’s Xi Jinping.
Instead, the PM’s official spokesperson, speaking to journalists in Beijing, said a “constructive and more open relationship with China is in the UK’s national interest”.
Responding, the Conservative Party leader said: “Keir Starmer seems incapable of acting in Britain’s national interest.
“We should not roll out the red carpet for a state that conducts daily espionage in our country, flouts international trading rules and aids Putin in his senseless war on Ukraine.”
A state visit is very unlikely, it is understood – so a literal red carpet may be off the cards.
Badenoch continued: “We need a dialogue with China, we do not need to kowtow to them.
“But Keir Starmer is weak and has no backbone.
“The Conservatives will always work for a stronger economy and stronger country.”
The Tory leader told journalists yesterday that she would not have travelled to China if she was PM, as she believes it is the wrong time.
She has also said she would not have approved plans for a Chinese so-called “super embassy” in London, which Starmer’s government has done.
But the PM has called for a “sophisticated relationship” with China, while his spokesperson said the “ice age” era of UK-China relations is over.
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