Chinese Premier Li Qiang will arrive in Ireland on Tuesday to meet with Irish leaders on China’s relationship with the European Union and other global and bilateral issues.
LONDON — Chinese Premier Li Qiang will arrive in Ireland on Tuesday to meet with Irish leaders on China’s relationship with the European Union and other global and bilateral issues.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar will host lunch and bilateral talks with PM Lee at the Irish Guesthouse in Dublin on Wednesday.
“China is a very important political and economic power in the world, and in that sense it is always getting bigger. Therefore, it is important to have good relations with China, but at the same time there are some issues that need to be discussed. “Yes,” Mr Varadkar said ahead of the visit.
Li is a close ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping and was appointed as the country’s No. 2 leader and top economic official in March last year. A former Shanghai Party secretary, he imposed a strict “zero-corona” lockdown on Shanghai in 2022.
He made Europe the destination of his first overseas trip last summer, visiting Europe’s major economies Germany and France to discuss global issues such as trade, climate change and the war in Ukraine.
At the time, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected the idea of ”decoupling” from China, calling instead for “risk aversion” to avoid over-reliance on Chinese trade.
This is the first visit by a senior Chinese leader to Ireland since Li’s predecessor Li Keqiang visited in 2015.
He is expected to arrive late Tuesday from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, making him the first senior Chinese official to attend since Xi attended the 2017 annual meeting.