China to buy $1.2 bn Rolls-Royce engines Airbus fleet

Prime Minister David Cameron, leading his country's largest-ever official delegation to China, today met his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao as the two countries signed deals worth more than $1 billion.

The prime minister, who is visiting China for the first time after taking up the top post, is heading a delegation of four cabinet ministers and 43 business leaders.

He described the two-day visit as a "vitally important trade mission".

"We have a really high-level dialogue with China on all sorts of issues, ranging from the economic and trade and business, and yes, of course, human rights, too. And that's as it should be," Camaron was quoted as saying by BBC.

China today inked $1.2 billion deal with Britain to purchase Rolls-Royce engines for 16 Airbus A330 jets, official media here reported.

The deal was signed after Wen met Cameron at the Great Hall of the People. Rolls-Royce also agreed to provide oil consumption-minimisation systems to China Eastern.

Cameron, who is heading a delegation of over 50 British businessmen, held bilateral talks with Wen and discussed ways to further enhance the friendly cooperation between the two sides.

The British premier's efforts to build business ties with Beijing, however, risked being eclipsed amid growing pressure on him to raise the issue of China's human rights record.

Cameron is the first Western leader to visit China since jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8 -- an honour hailed in the West but decried by Beijing as tantamount to "encouraging crime".

The British leader said while it is "right we have a dialogue about these things", "we shouldn't be lecturing or hectoring".

Cameron's Labour-Liberal-Democrat coalition, which came to power in May, is looking for new sources of economic growth after unveiling the deepest public sector spending cuts in decades last month.

Ahead of his visit, China said it attached “great importance” to its ties with Britain and would like to "inject new vitality" to the bilateral ties.

China also looks for positive results out of the visit as it came before the G-20 summit to be held in Seoul on November 11 and 12.