"I hope that this visit is a very positive one, that Britain comes away from it feeling this was worth the effort," Professor Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London, has expressed cautious optimism that Prime Minister Keir Starmer's visit to China could reset a relationship that has veered erratically for nearly a decade.

It is believed by an Australian scholar that as China continues to assert itself as an unexpected champion of open trade, its domestic economic trajectory offers concrete evidence of its capacity to shape the global economic order.