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British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has defended her government's attempts to strengthen economic ties with China, despite new allegations of a suspected Chinese spy infiltrating the British establishment.
Cooper said Britain continues to take a strong approach to any challenge “to our national security and our economic security from China or other countries around the world.”
But she told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg: “With China, we also have to ensure that we have that economic interaction and cooperation as well. It's a complex arrangement.”
Cooper's comments came after it emerged that a suspected Chinese spy had become a spy Confidant of the Duke of York. Prince Andrew said he cut off communications with him after being warned about their activities.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been trying to build ties with Beijing in a bid to boost economic growth, and held talks with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, at the G20 summit. In Rio de Janeiro last month.
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will travel to Beijing for an “economic and financial dialogue” next month, following a visit by Foreign Secretary David Lammy to the Chinese capital in October.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, told the Financial Times that Starmer was trying to take Britain back 10 years to the “ridiculous golden age of George Osborne,” referring to the former Tory chancellor’s courtship of China.
Duncan Smith, who was sanctioned by China in 2021, said: “I don’t know what it would take for pompous prime ministers to realize that China doesn’t care about us. They want us to buy their goods and are trying to infiltrate our institutions.”
He claimed that Beijing views Britain as the “soft underbelly” of the Western security network known as the “Five Eyes”, which includes the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
An alleged Chinese agent who had links to Prince Andrew has been excluded from Britain. An immigration court hearing on Thursday upheld an earlier Home Office decision to ban the 50-year-old Chinese national.
The court heard that MI5 claimed they were members of the Chinese Communist Party and working for the United Front Work Department, which collects intelligence on behalf of the Chinese state.
The data that the British Security Service downloaded from the man’s phone in November 2021, after he was stopped at the border, revealed his close relations with the second son of the late Queen Elizabeth, according to court documents.
He established an “extraordinary degree of trust” with the duke, and was authorized to act on his behalf “in dealings with potential partners and investors in China,” according to the documents.
The Chinese national was also an honorary member of the Group of 48 Club, which was set up in the 1940s to promote trade relations between China and the UK and whose members include senior British politicians, civil servants, business executives and diplomats.
In the process, he developed a high-level network of British establishment business, political and royal figures, which the court heard “could be leveraged for the purposes of political interference by the Chinese Communist Party (including the United Women’s Federation) or the Chinese state”.
Previous business clients he has worked with as a consultant in China include GSK and luxury car manufacturer McLaren.
He also advised China Minsheng Investment Group, a Chinese private equity firm, on entering the UK market. During his appeal against the exclusion, his lawyer stressed the importance of some of these activities for the United Kingdom.
