Exclusive:South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard to visit China to drum up investment

Mr Coppard revealed that he will be travelling to the global superpower later this year to boost foreign investment into South Yorkshire.

He told The Yorkshire Post: “China is a big driver of clean technology and we want investment from right across the world.”

In the last two years, the Mayor has visited Pittsburgh twice, and Hampton Roads, the world’s biggest naval base in Virginia, where he signed a memorandum of understanding.

His trip to China is likely to be the most controversial in some quarters.

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves visited Shanghai and Beijing last month as part of the Labour Government’s push for greater engagement, after a freezing of relations under previous Conservative prime ministers.

Ms Reeves announced that agreements had been reached worth £600m to the UK economy over the next five years, while “re-engagement” with China “already sets us on course to deliver up to £1bn of value for the UK economy”.

The new Government has promised to “challenge” China where necessary, amid long-standing human rights concerns about the treatment of Uighur Muslims, constraints on freedoms in Hong Kong and its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Treasury said Ms Reeves had explicitly raised the case of British national and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai, who has been detained in Hong Kong since 2020, as well as allegations of the use of forced labour in Xinjiang and the Chinese government’s sanctions against UK parliamentarians.

While alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo, who was banned from the UK, is said to have been a “close” confidant of Prince Andrew.

As well as China, Mr Coppard also plans to visit Seattle, the home of Microsoft, later this year.

Former Obama administration official Bruce Katz has been working with the combined authority on the data that is used to drive public and private investments.

In particular, he has been focusing on getting funding from the Government’s upcoming Spending Review, which the Mayor said “we hope will be good for us”.

“We are right at the forefront internationally of some of these net zero technologies,” Mr Coppard explained.

“We’ve got the biggest clean energy market in the whole of the country.

“The advanced manufacturing district there is the world’s first and best innovation, and the advanced manufacturing expertise coming out of the university is second to none.”

These resources, as well as the pride of people in the region, was the reason US energy equipment company Holtec chose South Yorkshire for a £1.5bn investment to build its small modular nuclear reactor, which will power 300,000 homes and businesses.

“We don’t just want the most of the UK’s supply chain when it comes to new nuclear, new energy, new sustainable energy technologies,” Mr Coppard said.

“We want huge parts of the global supply chain around those technologies, and that can really drive South Yorkshire’s economy.

“Companies like Holtec, an American investor, identifying South Yorkshire of all the places globally where they could invest, I think speaks volumes, because it says just what the international community and private investors think about the capabilities of the region.”