By Xu Zeyu

As Sir Keir Starmer strolled through the Forbidden City, the six-century-old monument of Chinese dynastic power, social media was abuzz with snarky comparisons to Donald Trump’s 2017 visit, when the U.S. president was personally escorted by Xi Jinping through the same halls and courtyards with the full pomp of a dignitary. Armchair critics eagerly piled on Starmer’s relatively low-key presence: no crowd roped off, no prominent leader at his side.

Right in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where Starmer paused to take in the grandeur, Trump had once questioned China’s claim to antiquity: “I guess the older culture, they say, is Egypt with 8,000.” Xi replied: “Egypt is a bit more ancient. But the only civilization that continues uninterrupted is China.” Earlier that day, during formal talks ahead of Starmer’s visit to the Forbidden City, Xi struck a similar historical chord with the British prime minister, invoking what he called a “grand view of history.”

Contrary to what online ridicules imply, Beijing rolled out the full red-carpet treatment for the first British leader to visit China in eight years, who were successively received by the top three figures in Chinese politics: President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Qiang, and National People’s Congress Chairman Zhao Leji. The formal one-on-one with President Xi, originally scheduled for 40 minutes, extended to 80 minutes, yielding productive exchanges that officials on both sides described as “warm and constructive.” It was on this occasion that Xi said to Starmer:

“China stands ready to work with Britain in upholding a grand view of history, rising above differences, and promoting mutual respect, in order to translate the promising potential of cooperation into remarkable accomplishments, open up new vistas for China-Britain relations and cooperation to better benefit both the two peoples and the world at large.”

The wording is particularly unorthodox in a diplomatic setting. Xi Jinping brought up the concept of the “grand view of history” in February 2021, when urging a room full of Party seniors to study history ahead of the upcoming centenary of the Communist Party of China. At the conference, he remarked:

“Efforts should be made to educate and guide the entire Party to take into account China’s pursuit of national rejuvenation strategy amid global changes of a scale unseen in a century, develop a grand view of history, examine the dynamics of change and identify historical patterns from the long course of history, the tide of the times, and the global landscape, formulate corresponding strategies and policies, and advance our work with a holistic, foresighted, and innovative approach.”

As a distinctly Party terminology rooted in Marxist ideology, the “grand view of history” has since been rarely invoked in public, even when the top leader addressed Party cadres. To deploy such a ideological term during a meeting with a visiting foreign head of government was, therefore, a highly calculated move, coded with subtext.

On the flight to Beijing, Starmer cautioned that Sino-British relations must not veer from a “golden age” to an “ice age.” But the remarks about a “grand view of history” appeared to reflect Beijing’s perspective on that trajectory—namely, London’s abandonment of its commitment to the “golden age” made a decade ago.

When Xi paid his first state visit to Britain in 2015, it was just over a decade after the two countries had established a “comprehensive strategic partnership.” At the time, Britain was China’s second-largest trading partner and the top investment destination in Europe. London had positioned itself as a trailblazer in finance, becoming the first Western nation to issue sovereign RMB bonds and the earliest major Western power to join the Beijing-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Barbara Woodward, then British ambassador to China, announced that the visit would establish “a global partnership for the 21st century and ushering in a golden decade in China-UK relations.”

The ensuing “golden decade,” however, played out in precisely the opposite direction. Months after Trump’s 2017 Forbidden City tour, Washington launched the first round of the trade war on China. Britain, following Washington’s footsteps in containment strategy, adopted an increasingly adversarial posture toward Beijing on issues such as Hong Kong riots, Xinjiang cotton, “derisking” in supply chains, and technology blockade against China, effectively dismantling the shared vision for deepening bilateral ties.

Today, as the U.S. casts covetous eyes on Greenland, denigrates the memory of fallen British soldiers, and threatens a tariff onslaught against the transatlantic partnership under the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” London’s move to mend ties with Beijing feels less like a strategic pivot than a desperate hedge against “Discordia Americana.”

From Beijing’s standpoint, this sudden diplomatic warm-up appears woefully lacking in a genuine long-term historical vision. Britain’s overtures look like the latest policy oscillation driven by the fickle whims of Washington. It naturally raises a question: should a less idiosyncratic president enter the White House in 2029, would No. 10 once again find a return to an “ice age” with China acceptable?

This skepticism runs even deeper. A leading Chinese scholar on U.S. politics once likened the U.S.-Europe relationship to a marriage: they may “quarrel at the headboard but they reconcile at the foot of the bed.” This Chinese idiom captures the prevailing sentiment in Chinese strategic circles: for all the recent frictions, the West remains an exclusive, if temporarily dysfunctional, club.

While Western politicians such as Mark Carney fret over a “rupture” in the post–Cold War order, for much of the Global South, there is no sign of a break—only the continuation of a U.S.-led hegemony under which they have long lived. The “new world order” is simply a case of a new king starting to abuse nobles the same way he once abused commoners. The nobles now cry out against him as a tyrant, not because they find the hierarchy unjust, but because they have lost their prerogatives to act with impunity.

The “grand view of history” may well serve as a pointed reminder to European leaders not to succumb to amnesia in the wake of Trumpian shocks. Europe was never Washington’s equal, and Beijing has no intention of serving as leverage for Europe to buy its way back into a “liberal” past.

Starmer’s visit laid bare this unvarnished economic realism. Landing in Beijing with a retinue of business titans, he tweeted that he aimed to “deliver for the British people.” To be sure, Beijing welcomed the push to expand trade links, extending agreements on Scotch whisky, pharmaceuticals, and visa-free travel—deals that have understandably drawn Trump’s ire. However, China expects Britain to be more than trade-obsessed “strangers at the gate.”

What Beijing truly seeks is for Britain to act as a “major power” in global affairs, a term Xi repeatedly used during his 2015 state visit. He used it again last Thursday, albeit in guarded terms: “International law can only work when all countries obey it, and major powers must lead by example, or the world will return to the law of the jungle.”

China does not seek an ally in Britain; it instead asks for a partner with independent strategic thinking, one capable of injecting certainty into the increasingly volatile global system. Even that modest expectation, however, appears to overshoot Britain’s ambitions. During the decade once heralded as the “golden decade,” Britain seemed to have voluntarily surrendered the very “major power” identity Beijing invokes.

The self-demoting nature of Britain’s foreign policy diverges sharply from how most Chinese view the island country’s historical role—something that even eludes the British themselves. The Britain-launched Opium War of 1840 is widely regarded as the starting point of China’s “century of humiliation.” The overarching goal of the Party, the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” aims to restore China’s international standing to what it was before the arrival of British gunboats. Referred to in Chinese textbooks as “the empire on which the sun never sets,” Britain’s colonial legacy is not only reflected in Chinese artifacts looted and displayed in the British Museum, but also continues to manifest in China-India border disputes and unrest in Hong Kong.

Yet China sees Britain not merely as a once-formidable power that left an indelible mark on its modern history and geopolitical landscape, but also as an autonomous, pragmatic nation that has shown historical foresight in global engagement. Britain was the first Western power to recognize the People’s Republic of China, in the second year of its founding to be exact—three decades before the U.S. followed suit. That decision remains, in Chinese eyes, a rare demonstration of strategic independence and pragmatism for an empire in decline.

As Winston Churchill once put it, “the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” This may now be a rare, and perhaps final, window for Britain and other European nations, which have now awakened to the grim reality that the American-led “liberal order” neither embraces genuine liberal values nor provides a predictable order. They have an opportunity to assert themselves as a truly autonomous “pole” in an emerging multipolar world, rather than simply dancing to America’s capricious whims with diplomatic flip-flops.

When Donald Trump was in the Forbidden City in 2017, he failed to grasp or chose to disregard the subtle historical metaphor conveyed by his Chinese host: the imperative to avoid a “clash of civilizations” through dialogue and mutual respect. Instead, within months, his administration dragged the whole world into an era of intensifying U.S.-China confrontation, though the way things went afterwards was a far cry from the Cold War in living memory. How Sir Keir Starmer makes out of the “grand view of history” during his own walk through those same imperial halls may yet prove to be a critical moment—one that future historians will cite with either admiration or commiseration when passing verdict on the fate of Britain and Europe.