On October 14, 2008, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his British counterpart Gordon Brown exchanged views in a telephone conversation on the current international financial crisis.

Wen said China paid much attention to the influence that the international financial crisis had brought to the world economy, while speaking highly of a range of measures that relevant countries including Britain had taken to stabilize the financial markets. He expressed hope that these measures will achieve positive effects. He called for learning from the crisis and correctly handling the relationship between virtual economy and real economy, between accumulation and consumption and between financial innovation and financial supervision.

Wen said although still at its beginning stage, the Chinese financial industry has in recent years opened to the outside world and the participation of Chinese financial institutions in international financial markets has increased. The reform over the years has strengthened Chinese financial institutions' anti-risk capability and the impact the current crisis has had on China is limited and controllable, Wen said. He added that China is confident of safeguarding the stability of the domestic financial market so long as “we remain clear-headed, improve awareness of crisis and actively respond to the situation”.

The Chinese premier also noted that the international community should strengthen cooperation to fight the crisis, adding that China will continue to play its active role with a responsible attitude. For China, what counts the most now is to successfully address its domestic affairs. China will adopt flexible and cautious macroeconomic policies to make the macroscopic control more targeted and flexible. Wen pledged that China will maintain stability in its economy and finance and capital markets and promote steady, rapid economic growth, which will contribute a lot to the world.

Echoing Wen’s views,Brown said the international community should make joint efforts to avoid global economic recession and should strengthen consultation and reach global consensus on how to cope with the current crisis. The international community should also remedy the weakness of the current global financial system and enhance supervision of the banking system, transnational corporations and financial institutions to rebuild global confidence. The international community attached importance to and spoke highly of China's role in stabilizing the current international financial market and Britain would like to reinforce exchanges and cooperation with China in this field, Brown added.