May's China trip revisits 'golden age' in ties

UK PRIME MINISTER Theresa May makes her first official visit to China from Wednesday to Friday to help deepen the bilateral strategic partnership. The visit, which comes hot on the heels of last month's United Kingdom-China Economic and Financial Dialogue summit, will seek to build on the momentum of President Xi Jinping's London visit in 2015 which saw relations enter a "golden era".

Since that landmark trip, the 2016 Brexit vote has only increased the emphasis London is putting on consolidating ties with key non-EU nations with its EU exit on the horizon. And through this Brexit lens, by far the most important element of the bilateral relationship with Beijing is economics.

The UK already receives the largest amount of Chinese foreign direct investment of any EU country, and is Beijing's second largest trade partner in Europe, after Germany. Meanwhile, China is the UK's second largest non-EU trade partner.