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Tag: UK news
China’s new London embassy on hold pending Westminster intervention
China has temporarily shelved plans to build a new embassy in London, angrily accusing the British government of not doing enough to force through planning permission for the project. China had been given until Thursday to file an appeal to Tower Hamlets council in east London after the proposals for the embassy were rejected. Beijing bought the Royal Mint Court site for its new embassy in 2018 for £255m, with the plan to move from its long-term but relatively cramped site in Portland Place, near Regent’s Park. Chinese officials appear…
UK considers tighter rules on investment in China after US clampdown
The British government is considering tightening rules on investment in China after the US president announced new measures aimed at limiting the dollars and expertise flowing into sensitive technologies in the country. Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday that authorises the US treasury secretary to prohibit or restrict US investments in Chinese entities in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics; quantum information technologies; and certain artificial intelligence systems. The US government has said the measures are designed to address national security risks. China said on Thursday it was gravely…
Lotus produces record 2,200 sports cars in first half of 2023
The British carmaker Lotus produced a record number of sports cars in the first half of 2023, as it gears up for a huge push behind sales of a new electric SUV under its Chinese owners’ expansion plans. Lotus, which marked its 75th anniversary this year, produced 2,200 vehicles in the first six months of the year at its factory in a former second world war bomber factory at Hethel in Norfolk. The bulk of the vehicles built were the Emira sports car, the first new Lotus product since the…
Chinese political slogans spark graffiti free-for-all on east London wall
It began with a group of artists and a propaganda slogan: 24 Chinese characters painted in bold red, stretching nearly 100 metres along Brick Lane in London’s East End. But over the weekend, the Chinese government slogan promoting – ironically or not – the country’s “socialist core values” was swiftly transformed into a forum scrutinising Xi Jinping’s communist rule after garnering attention on social media. Within hours of appearing on Saturday, the slogan was overlaid with references to the bloody Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and phrases: “Free Taiwan”, “Free…
HSBC executive apologises for calling UK weak over China
A senior executive at HSBC has apologised after saying the “weak” UK government had caved in to the US in its approach to doing business with China. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the bank’s head of public affairs and a former British diplomat, said sorry after “sharing his personal views” on Britain’s policy towards Beijing at a private event, a spokesperson for HSBC said. They added that Cowper-Coles’s comments were made under the Chatham House rule, a longstanding convention that means those in attendance cannot attribute remarks at an event to individual…
How can the west best tackle the threat from China? First, it must stop panicking | Kerry Brown
In the figure of Xi Jinping, with his dominant political personality and assertive communicative style, many in the west have found the autocrat they always feared would one day confront them. For Xi and the people around him, combatting what his administration calls “western universalism”, and western attempts to infiltrate China’s politics through economic and cultural engagement, has been a major task. Now the Xi threat has come right into our own back yard. A recent report by the British parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) defines the nature of…
Life in the UK for one of China’s most wanted – podcast
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‘I won’t be deterred’: Hong Kong activist Finn Lau vows to fight on despite arrest bounty
When Finn Lau woke one morning this month to dozens of messages urging him to take care, he was confused as to what had happened. But he was not distressed to learn that Hong Kong authorities had offered a HK$1m (£100,000) bounty for his arrest, along with that of seven other overseas activists, because it was not the first threat he had faced. Since helping to lead pro-democracy protests challenging Hong Kong’s authorities and a national security law that brought sweeping extraterritorial powers into force three years ago, Lau, 29,…
China complicit in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says MI6 chief
The head of MI6 has accused China’s government and its leader, Xi Jinping, of being “absolutely complicit” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in a rare public address in Prague. Sir Richard Moore, who has been chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service since 2020, also offered comment on the extraordinary mutiny in June by the mercenary Wagner group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, Xi and Vladimir Putin signed a “no limits” partnership between their countries. After the war began, China’s government sought to present itself as…