Yvette Cooper to Visit China and India This Week to Address Iran, Ukraine and Ebola Crises

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will travel to China and India this week as the United Kingdom seeks to deepen diplomatic and commercial engagement while coordinating responses to several major global crises.

In Beijing on Tuesday she is scheduled to meet Vice President Han Zheng and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. After those talks she will visit Shenzhen, the southern technology hub near Hong Kong, to meet business and technology leaders.

She will then fly to Delhi to meet Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Thursday, accompanied by businesspeople and academic experts to discuss bilateral cooperation and global challenges.

Officials say her discussions in both capitals will concentrate on a range of urgent international issues, notably the conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine, and the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The meetings aim to coordinate diplomatic responses, explore humanitarian support and consider economic and security implications.

Cooper's visit follows recent outreach by Prime Minister Keir Starmer: he visited China five months ago as part of the Labour government's effort to rebuild ties with Beijing after several years of cooler relations under previous administrations. The prime minister also led a trade delegation to Mumbai last October and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Several senior ministers and Starmer's national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, have also travelled to China as part of ongoing engagement.