Global News Podcast - Why is China seeking closer UK ties?

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

China and the UK have agreed a number of new deals during the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's visit to Beijing. They include visa-free travel for UK citizens visiting the country for less than 30 days, and a partnership aimed at increasing trade in services between the two countries. The British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has also announced a $15bn investment in China. Keir Starmer says the relationship between the UK and China is in a "good, strong place" after talks with President Xi Jinping.Also: scientists plan to drill through the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica to understand how fast the ice is melting. China has executed 11 members of a notorious mafia family that ran scam centres in Myanmar along its border. India joins a growing number of countries considering restricting social media for children. Tesla reports its first drop in annual profits as it drives towards a brave new world of artificial intelligence and robotics. Hungary's long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces his most serious challenge yet in the country's upcoming election - we hear about his main challenger Peter Magyar who is leading in the polls. And a film promising a rare glimpse into the life of the US First Lady Melania Trump is released in cinemas worldwide, but early ticket sales fall flat.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and at 1545 hours GMT on Thursday the 29th of January, these are our main stories. The British Prime Minister, Kirstarmer, says really good progress has been made on his visit to Beijing, where he's met China's leader at Xi Jinping. Why scientists are drilling into the huge Thwait's glacier in Antarctica, will Fidesz, the party of Hungary's Prime Minister, Victor Orban, win a fifth consecutive term in office in the country's upcoming elections.

Also in this podcast, as India's massive market is explored by YouTubers. We'll propose a other bar. We'll propose a lot of our showbacked in our today's new video. Will proposals to curb access to social media for children make any headway in the country? A three-day exercise in warming up the relationship between London and Beijing is underway in the Chinese capital. Britain's Prime Minister Kier Starrmer and China's President Xi Jinping have been meeting, as well as business leaders from both nations. So far, a deal has been announced on a visa-free 30-day travel deal for Britain's going to China,

as well as a major investment plan in China by the medical giant AstraZeneca. But while both countries hope to boost economic and cultural ties, how much space is there for the UK to raise concerns about China's human rights record? The most prominent case for the UK is that of the jailed British Hong Kong businessman and activist Jimmy Lai, charged under the controversial national security law that China introduced in Hong Kong in response to large pro-democracy protests. that have also been widespread human rights abuses against the Uighur minority in China itself.

Our political editor, Chris Mason, asked Kirstama how forcefully he'd raise these issues with Xi Jinping. Part of the rationale for engagement is to make sure that we can both seize the opportunities that are available, which is what we've done, but also have a mature discussion about issues that we... Were they listening on that, you think? Yes, we did have a respectful discussion about that, raised those issues, as you would expect. But that, if you like, is part and parcel of the reason to engage. It is in our national interest.

It gives us great opportunities. But it also gives us the opportunity to have those discussions about areas where we disagree. Jimmy Lai's son, Sebastian, had this to say. The phrase they used as a normalisation, right? But what are we normalising here if my father is still in prison in Hong Kong? He's a British citizen. He's been arbitrarily detained.

Multiple states have called for his release. This is something that we will never. normalize. So whether my father is freed or not, it is ultimate test. I mean, it's a very visual representation of how China views our relationship. I mean, we could give them the world, but if they're not giving anything back, this is not a relationship. So in terms of what's been agreed so far, how big are those deals in the grand scheme of things? I asked our China correspondent Laura Bicker, who's in Beijing? There was an expectation that there would be something bigger. Now, the visit isn't over yet. There's still more to come and it is a significant

investment by AstraZeneca and of course this visa-free travel is something that other European countries have had, more than 70 countries in fact around the world have and Britain was an outlier mainly because China offers these visas after a world leader arrives on their doorstep. It's almost like, look, come here and then we'll give you the visas. And I think it's kind of on the periphery. I think there are bigger issues that play, but it does seem that at least negotiations are starting. And if you speak to those who kind of do business here in China, they believe that this smooth the wheels, so to speak, so that when they go to their Chinese counterparts, more permission is granted, more access is granted after a world leader visits

and after relations come out of the deep freeze. There has been criticism, for example, the shadow home office minister, Alicia Cairns, says the Prime Minister, Kirstama, should not have gone to China without a precondition that the jailed Jimmy Lai would be freed. And there's also been criticism of giving the go-ahead to a huge Chinese embassy here in London. Does China really listen to what the UK is saying? I think they'll sit there. I think they will make noises. But I think when it comes to issues on human rights, when it comes to security concerns, China really pushes back. It turns around and says to their counterparts,

stop interfering in internal affairs. And I think they expect it to come up. They know that when Western governments face their counterparts here in Beijing, that that's something they've been told to raise. They know that it's coming and they have their responses prepared. Is it going to change things very much doubt it? And I think actually one of the things that I've heard many Chinese, commentators push back on. I heard from a few yesterday saying on various foreign media, hang on,

you're accusing China of human rights abuses, but look at the United States. Now, one has got absolutely nothing to do with the other. But what China is basically saying is you don't have the moral high ground anymore. Well, you've raised the United States and President Xi described the world as turbulent and fluid. How do you think China is positioning itself now? China is feeling confident. They're watching this parade of world leaders arrive on their doorstep. From France, from Germany next month, from Canada, from South Korea, from Finland and now the UK, these are traditional US allies now finding a way to overcome their differences with Beijing.

And I think what China is trying to do is use its status as the world's factory, with its manufacturing prowess to kind of galvanise power and influence on the world stage. So that is how it's kind of portraying it not just to the leaders arriving, but also to its domestic audience. I've just been watching the flagship bulletin here in China. They spent 18 minutes of their 30-minute bulletin on Sir Kerr Sturmer's visit. That's extraordinary. So it's not just being sold to the world as China's doing deals,

while Donald Trump threatens tariffs, it's also being shown to its own population that China is having a new prestige in the world. Laura Bicker. Meanwhile, China says it's executed 11 people linked to online scam operations in Myanmar. Beijing has stepped up its crackdown against the compounds,

where Chinese speakers have been lured and trafficked to work in the elaborate fraud enterprises. A Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, has more. These 11 who've been executed are the first, and a whole number of people who were captured in one town in the far northeast of Myanmar, kind of golden triangle area, famous for years for having its own militias, for having lots of drug production. It's right on the Chinese border, and the four families who ran this town called Laokine started with casinos, but during COVID when Chinese couldn't come across,

once that stopped, they built up these scam operations. Many of the people working there were lured in. They were treated very harshly indeed. They were in effect, imprisoned. And I think of all the scam operations that have gone on in lots of places in Southeast Asia, this was one of the toughest and most brutal. They're essentially the classic sort of fraud, but much more sophisticated than what people would have experienced maybe 30 years ago. People create fake identities for themselves. You've got huge numbers of people packed into these compounds, sometimes thousands of them. They get hold of people's phone details, they approach them on social media. They tend to befriend, often not.

elderly people, people on their own, and over time build up a relationship and then start offering them chances to make money. And they are very persuasive and millions of people around the world have fallen for them and end up essentially emptying their life savings. It's known as pig butchering. It's a highly structured, very sophisticated form of scamming with lots of deception, lots of AI used to convince people that they've actually got a friend giving them good advice and it's worth tens of billions of dollars a year. Jonathan Head. The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is a colossal mass of ice and snow, covering an area roughly the size of Great Britain. It's nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier

because it's one of the fastest melting glaciers in Antarctica. Now a team of scientists from the UK and South Korea have set up camp on the Thwaites and over the next two weeks they'll gather information on the glacier. Dr Peter Davis is an ocean-organic. at British Antarctic Survey. Speaking to the BBC from the Thwaites Glacier, he told us how his team plans to gather the data. We use this hot water drill. And basically, if you imagine a carto pressure washer

and scale it up many, many times, that's the system. So we have big tanks of water, 20,000 litres is what we start with. We have heaters, we have pumps. And we generate a high pressure flow of water at about 90 degrees that we send down a massive pipe,

more like just a big host, essentially an oversized hose pipe into the ice, and we drilled at about half a meter a minute, so about 30 hours will have drilled through the ice and have access to the ocean underneath. Our climate editor, Justin Rolett, is one of only a handful of journalists to have ever visited Thwaites, and he told us more about the importance of this glacier. It's, as you said, the largest and one of the fastest changing glaciers in the world. It sits in the West Antarctic, this huge basin of ice, and it kind of acts as a kind of barrier. a natural barrier, a cork in the frozen bottle of West Antarctica, if you like, holding back the other glaciers.

So if Thwaites melted out, the other glaciers would then have the space themselves to melt out. So it's worrying because Thwaites on its own is 65 centimetres of sea level rise globally. So a huge impact on sea level rise just from Thwaites. If the other glaciers melted out, we're talking more like three metres. So it's a real serious peril for the world if the entire basin were to melt out. It sits below half the glacier is below the sea level, going down to a depth of about two kilometres, and then there's sort of two kilometres of ice above it. So that's why there's such a vast amount of water that could pour into the sea.

So it's crucial that we understand the process is driving, the melting to give us the forecast we need to adapt our societies to deal with the sea level rise that will come as the glacier. melts out over the next couple of centuries. And that's the idea is to use that hot water. Drill down through the ice, as you heard Pete say there, drill down through the ice a kilometer, and then they put a complex equipment down there to measure the kind of flow of the water, the temperature of the water, at that grounding point, their grounding line, the point at which the glacier kind of floats off the bed of the ocean as warm water melts away the bottom of it. They'll also be taking sediment samples and they can look at that to see how the glass is changed.

over the decades and centuries and look at the movement to try and understand, you know, what's happening with this crucial glacier. Everyone listening to you, Justin, will be worrying about this and how worried should we be? I mean, it's not going to collapse anytime soon, is it? It appears for accelerating, so satellite images show that the melt rate is increasing. It's melting increasingly fast, and the flow of anise is moving more quickly. These are slow processes still. We're talking a meltout over centuries, not over decades.

But it is, you know, as the doomsday moniker suggests, it is the most worrying area of ice in the world because of the huge scale of it. So we should be concerned and we should be thinking about the impact of future sea level and the kind of adaptations we need because so many cities around the world are at or near sea level and therefore would be disastrously affected if the kind of sea level rise that we're talking about happened. Justin Rodart. And for more in this story, you can go on YouTube, search for Beatt. BBC News, click on the logo, then choose podcasts and global news podcast. There's a news story

available every weekday. The electric carmaker Tesla has experienced its first ever annual decline in revenue, closing a difficult year 3% down. Now, Elon Musk's company looks to be shifting its focus to other products, including artificial intelligence and robots. Our North America technology correspondent is Lily Jamali. We asked her, what's going on? I'll start with revenue, which saw an annual drop the first that this company has experienced. So that's a big deal. Profits down 61% in the fourth quarter. That's the quarter that ended in December. Why is that, you know, two big reasons come to mind. One is just increased competition in the electric vehicle space. It wasn't long ago, just a couple weeks ago, that we saw that China's

B.YD has surpassed Tesla as the biggest EV maker in the world. And we've also seen a bit of a backlash, to say the least, against Elon Musk, the boss at Tesla for his involvement in politics and the role that he played in the Trump administration for the first couple of months last year. So what we're seeing now is a pivot away from EVs. Elon Musk even said that they are actually going to be phasing out the Model S and the Model X, two vehicles that were blockbusters at various points in this company's history. It was there when the Model X was released 10 years ago. So the company seemed like it was at the top of the world back then, but they're moving towards robotics, moving towards AI, capping that with this $2 billion investment by Tesla in Musk's private artificial intelligence venture XAI.

Lily Jamali in San Francisco. Still to come in this podcast with a new documentary about her being released in cinemas, how is Melania Trump upended expectations? So everything we thought we knew about the fact you needed a first lady. kind of gazing adoringly at the great man. She just went, no, I'd rather not, actually. No, thank you. If journalism is the first draft of history,

what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. And now to India. So, brie, one more time you're all of our today's new video. And today a very tagger game we're going to play. Game's name is M&D. Where creators like these have helped turn the country into one of the biggest social media audiences on the planet.

But that audience could start shrinking, at least at the younger end. India's chief economic advisor has suggested the country should consider age-based limits on social media, warning platforms are predatory in how they keep children online. It's only a proposal for now, but it taps into a growing global trend after Australia introduced a ban for under 16s. A global affairs reporter and Barrison Etherachan told us more. If you describe India in one word, this is where every social media company wants to go and then expand the market.

Just to give you a sheer scale, India has got about 500 million YouTube users, probably the highest in the world, 400 million in Facebook and 480 million in Instagram. And as you mentioned, the created economy is so huge, where you will see very often youngsters doing real standing in railway stations, sometimes dangerously near flooded bridges and other places. So it's quite huge. Now, in the economic survey, which comes ahead of the annual, We see that the economic advisor is proposing certain types of age-based restrictions because what he called the social media company, some of them as predatory because they are forcing people are getting addicted.

And so he's proposing also off-screen times and also device-free hours and also like telling people to share online activities to tell their youngsters to do all these things. I don't know how it's going to work. It didn't work in my home. So it is basically, so he's proposing this. What gives you a glimpse of what is the thought behind this? What is the discussion going among at the highest level of the Indian government? It all comes in the wake of what Australia did. And what are the European countries like France and Britain and Denmark they are discussing.

So it is a real thing that people now want to talk about putting age-based restrictions on social media, various apps. Is there a pushback because it's a pretty big blue, if it happened to, say, YouTube and meta, isn't it? It is indeed because, you know, it's also on the one side it is the economy and the other side people are also using it for other purposes. So far we haven't heard from these meta and other companies on this latest comment by the India's chief economic advisor. But what previously what they were saying was,

like if you're going to stop the youngsters from accessing Instagram or other social media apps, that might push them towards, you know, unregulated, some of these very dangerous or websites. So you are pushing them towards the dark web, and then they will try to access this information from a different area. So that is one argument from these companies. And of course, you know, it's not going to be easy.

How are you going to regulate it? But Indian states, like even though the various state governments have their own powers, like Andhra Pradesh and Goa, they also say that they are going to have a look at it, how they're going to monitor the social media usage. And Barasan, Ivarajan. With just 10 weeks to go until parliamentary elections in Hungary, the veteran Prime Minister of Viktor Orban and his governing Fides party faced their stiffest challenge yet.

Ex-Fides insider, Peter Magia and his TISA party lead in most of the polls and are promising a radical overhaul of the political and institutional system in Hungary if they win. But Fides still sound confident that the party can secure a remarkable fifth consecutive term in office with the backing of the most powerful leaders in the world, including Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. From Hungary, Nick Thorpe sent us this report. The Fides party Congress in January drew several thousand party faithful to a Congress center in Budapest, and an event modeled on big Trump-Republican make America great-again rallies. In dangerous times, we need a steady hand.

Politics is not an experimental laboratory. More than ever, we need the kind of leader who doesn't just react to events, but is actually one step ahead with them all. Earlier in January at his annual international press conference, Mr Orban faced questions about his friendly relations with the presidents of both Russia and America. The goal of our foreign policy is to make friends. I believe it's in the interest of the Hungarian people,

for the Hungarian government to be supported by as many major powers as possible. While Victor Orban is proud of his friendships with famous statesmen, he came to power and stayed in power with a promise to the Hungarian public, a new civic Hungary, hardworking, well-functioning, law-abiding, socially conservative, and self-confidently Hungarian. His challenger in the April election, Peter Madhya, offers essentially the same vision, because he claims that Orban betrayed it in his bid to stay in power. It's not very safe to go against this government

and to speak freely and openly criticizing openly this power. While Victor Orban and his party reveled in the Rasmataz of their Congress, Peter Madhya and the Tissar Party candidates for Hungary's 106 individual constituencies were out on. the streets. In the village of Matra Sölush in the Cherhat Hills, Peta Madhya and local Tissar party activists unload firewood over the fence into Jula and Valeria's garden. Both are elderly and disabled. A central plank of Peter Madya's promise to the Hungarian people is to bring home 17 billion euros of funds due to Hungary from the EU budget, but withheld due to allegations of rule of law abuses and corruption by the Orban government.

Peter Madhya's Tissa party is in the lead in his polls, says Polster Andraschpulai, but the electoral system tilts the playing field towards Fidez. Many people will vote for Tissa, he says, not because they especially like or trust Peter Madiard, but simply because he's the only hope against Victor Orban. If Fides tries to send a message that he is a bad guy, he's a narcissist, or he beats his wife, etc etc, etc. People think, yes, we know. And would you vote for such a guy? Yes, we would. The Hungarian election result on the 12th of April will be watched closely around the world.

Nick Thorpe in Hungary. In Venezuela, thousands of soldiers and police have pledged their loyalty to the acting president, Delci Rodriguez, at a military ceremony in the capital Caracas. Rodriguez became a leader after U.S. forces seized her predecessor, Nikolas Maduro, in early January. Here she is, speaking at the ceremony. Venezuela today needs to truly believe in politics. Venezuela today needs to truly believe in politics, but in politics with a capital P and with a V for Venezuela. And that means a dialogue among Venezuelans without any kind of external interference. Our reporter Mimi Swayby told me more about the significance of the event.

It's incredibly important. The military is and was a key asset for Nicolas Maduro, Delisio Rodriguez's predecessor, and it remains to be in place for her, really showing its support, really headed by the Interior Minister, the Oshdado Kobayo, who was a key figure in Nicolas Maduro's inner circle. And he is very much seen as a key force behind the scenes of the past government and now the interim government. So for having this very large asset, basically the people who hold the guns in Venezuela, being on your side is a key moment. And we saw that come into play with more than 3,000 troops and police, all dressed in uniform, file past Venezuela's now first female leader and commander-in-chief of the country. So a very important moment for Delci

Rodriguez. And as we heard there, she was very exclamatory, very emotive in her speech, essentially saying at one point that anybody who wishes any harm or to disrupt peace in Venezuela should stay in Washington. So some very very very... pointed comments there at the US, but very much saying that she is cementing herself in power. She's really shored up leadership and the military are a key part of that. How difficult is her position, do you think? She's towing a very tight line at the moment. So she's trying to shore up support for her leadership and really publicly show that as well inside Venezuela. But at the same time, she's trying

to appease President Trump of the US and show that she is cooperating. And to what level of cooperation. That's what we're really trying to see here. And what about the exiled Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Karina Machado's meeting with Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State? So this is the second high-profile meeting Maria Karina Machado has had with the Trump administration. She spoke with President Trump himself recently and now the Secretary of State. Marco Rubio has an invested interest in the region. He's a son of Cuban immigrants. And we understand in that closed meeting, that closed door meeting, that he again kind of reassured the opposition leader. that she has the US's long-term backing. Interesting, though, after the meeting, speaking to reporters,

Ms. Machalo said that Deso Rodriguez couldn't be trusted, that no one had any faith in her, and that she was essentially a key part of the so-called state terrorism that Venezuela is kind of issuing out of the moment. So again, some very heated and emotive language on the opposite side of the spectrum from the opposition leader. Mimi Swebe. She may be the first lady of the United States, but Melania Trump remains a bit of a mystery to most. most American people, making very few public appearances alongside her husband Donald. A new documentary called Melania, produced by Amazon, is being released in cinemas worldwide on Friday, promising a behind-the-scenes look at the First Lady, particularly during the weeks before the presidential inauguration last year. One country that won't be showing the film

is South Africa. Its main cinema operators pulled the documentary a day before its release, citing the current climate without elaborating more on the reason. Helen Lewis, staff writer at the Atlantic, spoke to Amor Rajan about what the Trump family and Amazon are getting out of the film. Amazon has, shall we say, burnished its relationship with the Trump White House. Obviously, that's something that Jeff Bezos has been very keen to do. The other thing he does, obviously, is owns the Washington Post, which refused to endorse Kamala Harris very notoriously at the last presidential election. So really, he's, you know, he is somebody who values very closely this relationship that he has with the Trump White House. So,

They've paid $40 million to make this. Most of that is reportedly gone to Melania Trump herself, plus another $35 million to market it. And, you know, she is an executive producer on this. So it's a big gift-wrapped present to the Trump White House, really. And as for Melania Trump, she's somebody who has really stayed massively in the background. You know, I think she's a fascinating First Lady because she's upended so many of our assumptions about American politics

and the role of the First Lady. She barely appeared on the campaign trail. She did the Madison Square Garden rally right at the end, but she didn't even speak at the Republican National Convention in 2024. So everything we thought we knew about the fact you needed a First Lady kind of gazing adoringly at the Great Man. She just went, no, I'd rather not, actually. No, thank you. And just on the genre that she has now entered,

this is part of her recent spate of films, isn't it? Not just from Amazon, but others, including other streamers like Netflix, where you get people to executive produce documentaries about their own lives, which cast them in a rather flattering light. Absolutely. I mean, the two documentaries on Netflix about the Beckams are another really good example of this. They're very much the authorised version of the life, you know. And that's the thing.

I don't think we'll learn anything enormously insightful from the Melania documentary. What we will learn is the storyline she wants to tell, what's the image that she wants to present, what's the story she feels that she's telling about her life. And one thing that might drive interest in this film is there has been this kind of contrast between Trump's immense availability on all platforms at all times and the fact that she has been somewhat enigmatic, somewhat distant, somewhat hard to note. Yeah, it's extraordinary really how little she has engaged in publicity.

You know, she notoriously she used to talk to her parents who lived in the White House with her in the first term and her son Baron in Slovenian and sort of lock Donald Trump out. You know, even in the trailer for the film, you know, all you see her is her, saying a couple of slightly icy things, and then Trump phoning her when she's in their New York apartment and to ask if she's watched something. And she says, no, I'll watch it on television later. You know, there's a kind of lack of being botheredness about it, which means that people have had to overread enormously from the few things that they do have. So one of her causes, a traditional first lady cause, has been children. She went to visit victims of the Trump regime's family separation policy at the border, splitting up immigrant children from their parents. And she did that wearing a jacket on the back said, almost unbelievably, I don't really care, do you? And literally no one knew what to make of this. She wrote in her autobiography, which was a masterpiece of Total Blanless, that this was terrible. How could the media overread from it?

But there are almost no other statements from her of any significance. So that has sort of been her biggest public statement to date, really. Helen Lewis from The Atlantic on Melania Trump. And that's it from us for now. if you want to get in touch, you can email us at Global Podcast at BBC.com.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story,

which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story, available wherever you get your podcasts. This edition of The Global News Podcast was mixed by Martin Baker, the producers were Alice Adderley and Chantal Hartle. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Valerie Sanderson. Until next time. Bye-bye. If journalism is the first draft of history,

what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.

story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.