BUSINESS leaders who will travel with Tony Blair today to China and India are demanding that the European Union immediately lift its blockade on Chinese textile imports.

The 40 company bosses are also attempting to spearhead a drive to increase Britain’s exports to China and India. Currently only 1% of UK exports go to each market.

Sir Digby Jones, director-general of the CBI, who put together the delegation, said the blockade was a cause of deep anger and embarrassment for British businesses.

“I’m furious,” he said. “We’re not protectionist in Britain. We understand you offshore the production of low-value goods and that by doing so you’re creating incomes for people who can buy our high-value goods.”

The blockade of 75m garments, under emergency quotas negotiatied in June by Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, was a symptom of “protectionist, hypocritical Europe”, Jones said, and had given the Chinese the “moral high ground”.

He called on the EU to release the blockaded imports immediately as a one-off gesture, without affecting next year’s quota, and work towards an abolition of the quotas over the next two to three years.

Mandelson, who will be attending this week’s EU-China summit in Beijing, said: “I still want and expect member states to agree to unblock the goods. It’s a matter of tactics, not principles.”

The backdrop to the visit, led by the prime minister in his capacity as EU president, is the relatively poor showing of British exporters. Britain’s trade gap with China alone is running at an annual rate of £10 billion.

John Harris, chairman of Alba, the consumer-electronics company, said he was aiming to move on from manufacturing in China — where Alba already has operations — to selling to Chinese consumers.

“I’m looking for business partners to sell our Grundig products, and possibly Grundig and Bush,” he said. “We have global brands and it is time to capitalise on it.”

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, predicted that by 2008 China would be the world’s second-biggest advertising market, after America. WPP’s Chinese revenues were growing by 20% a year, he said, while in India the growth was 13% annually.

Currently 80% of WPP’s revenues are from North America and Europe, but that would shift rapidly, he said. “This is where the growth is. China and India dominated the world economy before and they will do so again. It’s a 200-year cycle.”

Iain Grey, managing director of Airbus UK, said he would be using the trip to promote both Airbus and Britain’s part in it. Chinese and Indian airlines recently ordered Airbus A380 super-jumbos. “The UK has had a big part to play in the Airbus success story,” he said. “This is about building relationships. These are both markets with big potential.”

Other firms taking part in the visit include BP, the Arup Group, Rolls-Royce, Logica CMG and Fairline Boats.

Jones said that as well as securing business for British companies, one of the big issues on the agenda for this week’s trip would be putting the Doha trade round back on track. India, along with other developing economies, has been reluctant to free its markets to imports without action by Europe and America to cut agricultural support.

“It’s easy to forget that while India is turning out 125,000 computer graduates a year, it also has 700m people who work on the land,” he said. “We’ve got to break this logjam on trade. It is a key issue.”