Darling warns China: You can't build Airbus without Bristol

China is looking to poach lucrative Airbus contracts away from Bristol but does not have the engineering ability do it yet, the Chancellor has warned.

Alistair Darling met senior members of the Chinese government last week who pointed out they need the UK to fill the gaps in their manufacturing capability.

Although China wants to snatch aircraft building deals that will not happen for some years, he insisted.

"They know that when it comes to manufacturing, when it comes to research and development that is something we are very good at," he told the Bristol Evening Post.

"Take Airbus. The Chinese would like to see some of these aircraft built in China but they know very well that for some time to come a lot of them are going to be built in this country.

"A lot of the development and the advanced engineering is done here because we have got the advanced engineering capability."

Although he predicted unemployment will continue to rise into next year, despite preparing to announce today that Britain is officially out of recession, he said financial services, which account for around a fifth of jobs in Bristol, have a key role to play in the economic recovery.

In particular there will be massive opportunities ahead in the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian economies.

"There are many things that we do in this country that are highly sought after in different parts of the world," he added.

"And financial services – we will get through this, we will supervise and regulate them properly, but as an industry and as a service it something that around the world there is demand for our services.

"People say aren't you too dependent on them, well there's a million jobs in this country, and most of them by the way are outside the South East of England."

Mr Darling said people sometimes forgot that in places such as Bristol and Bournemouth "a lot of people are employed in this industry and it is very important to us".