During talks with Theresa May at the recent G20 meeting, Xi Jinping said that the two countries should seek common ground and shelve their differences<\/strong><\/a>, Tom Phillips at The Guardian reported:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Chinese president and the British prime minister held a 30-minute bilateral meeting at the G20 in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday, one week after\u00a0a war of words broke out\u00a0between London and Beijing over Hong Kong.<\/p>\n According to China\u2019s official news agency, Xinhua,\u00a0Xi told May\u00a0that Britain and China should \u201crespect each other\u2019s\u00a0core interests\u00a0and major concerns\u201d \u2013 of which Beijing considers the former British colony to be one.<\/p>\n \u201cChina and Britain need to seek common ground while shelving differences, and preserve the overall development of bilateral ties through concrete efforts to achieve more stable, rapid and sound development of bilateral relations,\u201d Xi added.<\/p>\n A senior No 10 official said that during a \u201cwarm meeting\u201d with Xi, May offered her congratulations for the recent 20th anniversary of Hong Kong\u2019s return to\u00a0China\u00a0in July 1997.<\/p>\n According to the official, May highlighted the economic success\u00a0Hong Kong\u00a0was enjoying but also \u201cstressed the continued commitment to the \u2018one country, two systems\u2019 regime,\u201d under which its 7.3 million citizens enjoy greater freedoms than those of China\u2019s authoritarian mainland. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official has clarified a remark made\u00a0at a press conference on June 30th by spokesperson Lu Kang\u00a0regarding China’s stance on the Sino-British\u00a0Joint Declaration on the handover of Hong Kong. Lu’s statement suggested that\u00a0China no longer considers the Sino-British\u00a0Joint Declaration to be legally binding. The document, signed in 1984, set out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1088,"featured_media":180586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,35,14744,14745,14746,100],"tags":[4661,1667,7445,4674],"class_list":["post-201539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-hong-kong","category-level-2-article","category-level-3-article","category-level-4-article","category-politics","tag-hong-kong-handover","tag-hong-kong-politics","tag-united-kingdom","tag-xi-jinping","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n