SHANGHAI — As Keir Starmer arrived for the first visit by a British prime minister to China for eight years, he stood next to a TV game show-style wheel of fortune.

The arrow pointed at “rise high,” next to “get rich immediately” and “everything will go smoothly.” Not one option on the wheel was negative.

Sadly for the U.K. prime minister, reality does not match the wheel — but he gave it a good go.

After an almost decade-long British chill toward China, Starmer reveled in three hours of talks and lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, where he called for a “more sophisticated” relationship and won effusive praise in return. Britain boasted it had secured visa-free travel for British citizens to China for up to 30 days and a cut in Chinese tariffs on Scotch whisky. Xi even said the warming would help “world peace.”

His wins so far (many details of which remain vague) are only a tiny sliver of the range of opportunities he claimed Chinese engagement could bring — and do not even touch on the controversies, given Beijing’s record on aggressive trade practices, human rights, espionage, cyber sabotage and transnational repression.

But the vibes on the ground are clear — Starmer is loving it, and wants to go much further.

POLITICO picks out five takeaways from following the entourage.

1) There’s no turning back now

Britain is now rolling inevitably toward greater engagement in a way that will be hard to reverse.

Labour’s warming to China has been in train since the party was in opposition, inspired by the U.S. Democrats and Australian Labor, and the lead-up to this meeting took more than a year.

No. 10 has bought into China’s reliance on protocol and iterative engagement. Xi is said to have been significantly warmer toward Starmer this week (their second meeting) than the first time they met at the G20 in Rome. Officials say it takes a long time to warm him up.

There is no doubt China’s readout of the meeting was deliberately friendlier to Labour than the Conservatives. One person on the last leader-level visit to China, by Conservative PM Theresa May in 2018, recalled that the meetings were “intellectually grueling” because Xi used consecutive translation, speaking for long periods before May could reply. This time officials say he used simultaneous translation.

It will not end here — because Starmer can’t afford for it to. Many of the dozen or so deals announced this week are only commitments to investigate options for future cooperation, so Britain will need to now push them into reality, with an array of dialogues planned in the future along with a visit by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

As Business Secretary Peter Kyle told a Thursday night reception at the British Embassy: “This trip is just the start.”

2) Britain’s still on the easy wins

Deals on whisky tariffs and visa-free travel were top of the No. 10 list but — as standalone wins without national security implications — they were the lowest-hanging fruit.

The two sides agreed to explore whether to enter negotiations towards a bilateral services agreement, which would make it easier for lawyers and accountants to use their professional qualifications across the two countries. In return, investment decisions in China were announced by firms including AstraZeneca and Octopus Energy.

But many of the other deals are only the start of a dialogue. One U.K. official called them “jam tomorrow deals.”

And Luke de Pulford, of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China campaign group, argued that despite Britain having a slight trade surplus in services “it’s tiny compared to the whole.” He added: “This trip to China seems to be based upon the notion that China is part of the solution to our economic woes. It’s not rooted in any evidence. China hasn’t done foreign direct investment in any serious way since 2017. It’s dropped off a cliff.”

Then there are areas — particularly wind farms — where officials are more edgy and which weren’t discussed by Starmer and Xi. One industry figure dismissed concerns that China could install “kill switches” in key infrastructure — shutting down a wind turbine would be the equivalent of a windless day — but concerns are real.

A second U.K. official said Britain had effectively categorized areas of the economy into three buckets — “slam dunks” to engage with China, “slam dunks” to block China, and everything in between. “We’ve been really clear [with China] about which sectors are accessible,” they said, which had helped smooth the path.

Then there are the litany of non-trade areas where China will be reluctant to engage: being challenged on Xi’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the treatment of the Uyghur people and democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai.

Britain is still awaiting approval of a major revamp of its embassy in Beijing, which will be expensive with U.K. contractors, materials and tech, all security-cleared, being brought in.

3) Starmer and his team were genuinely loving it

After such a build-up and so much controversy, Starmer has … been having a great time. The prime minister has struggled to peel the smile off his face and told business delegates they were “making history.”

Privately, several people around him enthused about the novelty of it all (many have never visited China and Starmer has not done so since before he went into politics). One said they were looking forward to seeing how Xi operates: “He’s very enigmatic.”

Briefing journalists in a small ante-room in the Forbidden City, Starmer enthused about Xi’s love of football and Shakespeare. And talking to business leaders, he repeated the president’s line about blind men finding an elephant: “One touches the leg and thinks it’s a pillow, another feels the belly and thinks it’s a wall. Too often this reflects how China is seen.”

So into the spirit was Starmer that he even ticked off Kyle for not bowing deeply enough. At the signing ceremony for a string of business deals, Kyle had seen his counterpart bend halfway to the floor — and responded with a polite nod of the head.

The vibes were energetic. Britain’s new ambassador to Beijing, Peter Wilson, flitted around ceaselessly and sat along from Starmer in seat 1E. The PM’s No. 10 business adviser, Varun Chandra, jumped from CEO to CEO at the British embassy.

The whole delegation was on burner phones and laptops (even leaving Apple Watches at home) but the security fears soon faded to the background for U.K. officials. CEOs on the trip queued up to tell journalists that Starmer was making the right choice. “We risk a technological gulf if we don’t engage,” said one.

There is one problem. Carry on like this, and Starmer will struggle to maintain his line that he is not re-entering a “golden era” — like the one controversially pushed by the Tories under David Cameron in the early 2010s — after all.

4) Business was everything

The trip was a tale of two groups of CEOs. The creatives and arts bosses gave the stardust and human connection that such a controversial visit needed — but business investment was the meat.

In his opening speech Starmer name-checked three people: Business Secretary Peter Kyle, City Minister Lucy Rigby and No. 10 business adviser Varun Chandra.

It even came through in the seating plan on the chartered British Airways plane, with financial services CEOs in the pricey seats while creatives were in economy — although this was because they were all paying their own way.

Everyone knew the bargain. One arts CEO confessed that, while their industry made money too, they knew they were not the uppermost priority.

Starmer’s aides insist they are delighted with what they managed to bag from Xi on Thursday, and believe it is at the top end of the expectations they had on the way out.

But that will mean the focus back home on the final “big number” of investment that No. 10 produces — and the questions about whether it is worth all the political energy — are even more acute.

5) Starmer’s still walking a tightrope

British CEOs were taken to see a collection of priceless Ming vases. It was a good metaphor.

Starmer and the No. 10 operation were more reticent even than usual on Thursday, refusing to give on-the-record comment about several basic details of what he raised in his meeting with Xi. Journalists were told that he raised the case of democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, but not whether he called directly for his release. The readout of the meeting from Communist China was more extensive (and poetic) than that from No. 10.

Likewise, journalists were given no advance heads-up of deals on tariffs and visas, even in the few hours between the bilateral and the announcements, while the details and protocol were nailed down.

There was good reason for the reticence. Not only was Starmer cautious not to offend his hosts; he also did not want to enrage U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened Canada with new tariffs after PM Mark Carney’s visit to Beijing this month.

Even with No. 10 briefing the U.S. on the trip’s objectives beforehand, and Starmer giving a pre-flight interview saying he wouldn’t choose between Xi and Trump, the president called Britain’s engagement “very dangerous” on Friday.

And then there’s the EU. The longer Trump’s provocations go on, the more some of Starmer’s more Europhile allies will want him to side not with the U.S. or China, but Brussels.

“There’s this huge blind spot in the middle of Europe,” complained one European diplomat. “The U.K. had the advantage of being the Trump whisperer, but that’s gone now.”

Starmer leaves China hoping he can whisper to Trump, Xi and Ursula von der Leyen all at the same time.