UK envoy to China visits Yanan, historic party site rarely seen by Western officials

Peter Wilson also goes to the village where Xi Jinping spent years in hard labour during Cultural Revolution2-MIN READ2-MIN0ListenPublished: 9:00pm, 18 Jun 2026The British ambassador to China has paid a rare visit to a Chinese communist heartland where President Xi Jinping performed hard labour as a young man.Ambassador Peter Wilson on Wednesday visited Yanan in the northwestern Chinese province of Shaanxi along with Lu Kang, vice-minister of the Communist Party’s International Department, the department said.State newspaper China-daily" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="12556" data-entity-type="organization">China Daily said Wilson made the trip at the invitation of the International Department.Xi Jinping urges stable partnership in talks with UK leaderThe two men toured the former revolutionary site at Yangjialing, the Yanan Revolutionary Memorial Hall, which is an important part of Beijing’s domestic ideology messaging but rarely visited by Western envoys.