China's new ambassador to the UK, Zheng Zeguang, has delivered his first message to British citizens and Chinese citizens living in the UK. 

Zheng has worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1986, and worked at China's embassy in Trinidad and Tobago briefly. Zheng was then based in the US twice, between 1994-1997 and 2005-2008. His most recent role was Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

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In the address, he noted the strong and historic trading relationship between China and the UK.

"Ever since the establishment of diplomatic ties at the ambassadorial level nearly 50 years ago, China-UK relations have gone through an extraordinary journey and fruitful results. China and the UK are important trading partners to each other. Despite the impact of COVID-19. Two-way trade and investment bucked the trend to register record growth last year. This speaks volumes about the great resilience and enormous potential of our business ties," he said. 
 

Although the world is changing - and Zheng noted the challenges are not all the same - there are also similar challenges. 
"China and the UK are both experiencing profound transformation. China has embarked on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in all respects. While the UK is faced with a new task of delivering global Britain. Our two countries also face the global challenges of COVID-19 and climate change."

Zheng studied at Cardiff University in the UK, and highlighted student mobility as one of the strengths in the China-UK relationship. 

"Our two sides may deepen cooperation in trade, finance, innovation, people to people exchanges in other fields and stepped-up coordination on global issues such as fighting COVID-19, spurring global recovery and tackling climate change. We also need to address our differences properly. These are the kind of efforts needed to ensure that China-UK relations will deliver more benefits to our peoples and contribute still more to world peace and common development."

Zheng replaced Liu Xiaoming, who was the longest-serving Chinese ambassador to the UK.