Allegations that a suspected Chinese spy has donated more than £500,000 to a senior Labour MP in Britain appear to fit part and parcel with Beijing’s modus operandi — using its billions in cash to buy political influence across the planet.
Barry Gardiner, who was a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, received the donations from Christine Ching Kui Lee — mainly to cover staffing costs in his office — over a period of six years, and employed her son as his diary manager.
MI5 took the rare step of issuing MPs and peers with a warning today about Miss Lee’s cultivating of British politicians to secure a ‘UK political landscape’ that was ‘favourable’ to China’s authoritarian government.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said it is ‘deeply concerning’ the Chinese Communist Party was targeting British parliamentarians.
However, anti-China hawks in the Conservative Party have long warned of China’s growing influence in Britain — from its attempt to build the UK’s 5G network to its infiltration of universities and involvement in the Hinkley Point nuclear power station.
More recently, Tory backbenchers including Sir Iain Duncan Smith have condemned Beijing’s international behaviour including its treatment of the Uighur Muslim population of Xinjiang province, suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, intimidation of Taiwan, and alleged cover-up of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
In recent years, China’s ruthless bid for world power has seen the Communist Party make more aggressive interventions in the internal affairs of smaller — and often poorer — sovereign states in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Beijing last month struck deals with a string of countries across Latin America to build up ‘civilian’ nuclear technology, develop space programmes and build 5G mobile networks which the US says could be used to spy on millions of people.
China has even pledged to build schools and fund classes teaching Chinese language and ‘culture’, though such institutions have been criticised elsewhere for pushing state propaganda and limiting academic freedom.
According to Mateo Haydar, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation, China has ambitions to become ‘the dominant influence in Latin America’.
Meanwhile, Beijing has invested more than £685billion across 42 Commonwealth member states since 2005.
Security experts argue that by ploughing huge sums of money into countries such as Barbados and Jamaica, China hopes to saddle them with such big unpayable debts that they are forced to hand over the assets used as security.
Allegations that a suspected Chinese spy has donated more than £500,000 to a senior Labour MP appear to fit part and parcel with Beijing’s modus operandi — cash for political influence (pictured, Chinese president Xi Jinping)
China has pumped cheap money into Latin America and the Caribbean for years, indebting governments and effectively buying influence. Where it has been unable to loan or buy, it has used armies of cheap workers to build key infrastructure projects, giving it outsized influence. And those ties are set to deepen with the signing of a new cooperation pact
China has invested more than £685billion across 42 Commonwealth member states since 2005 as the Communist Party's extraordinary bid for global power continues unimpeded
The new deal includes broad pledges for countries in the region to deepen ties with Beijing in a huge variety of sectors including trade, which has already seen China overhaul the US to become the region's biggest trading partner (left and right)
China has used a similar pattern of cheap loans, construction projects and purchases of key infrastructure to buy up influence in Africa which it hopes will help it out-compete the US. Beijing has now built its first overseas military base in the region (marked on the map) and is thought to be scouting a site for a second
Laos, Sierra Leone, and Guinea having received more than their entire GDP in investment from China
MI5 took the rare step of issuing MPs and peers with a warning today about Miss Lee’s cultivating of British politicians to secure a ‘UK political landscape’ that was ‘favourable’ to China’s authoritarian government
Barry Gardiner, who was a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, received the donations from Christine Ching Kui Lee — mainly to cover staffing costs in his office — over a period of six years, and employed her son as his diary manager
In some cases, this has included ports in crucial waterways that allow Beijing to challenge rival superpowers such as the Americans and the Indians.
Figures compiled by the American Enterprise Institute show that China has invested almost £500million into roads, homes, sewers and a hotel in Barbados, which recently shook off the last of Britain’s imperial influence and became a republic.
In nearby Jamaica, Beijing has invested around £2.6billion against a gross domestic product of £16.4billion, making the country the biggest recipient of Chinese money in the Caribbean.
When China wanted UN members to back its draconian Hong Kong National Security Law, it received support from Papua New Guinea and Antigua and Barbuda — two out of the 16 remaining Commonwealth realms. The former has received £5.3billion in Chinese investment (21 per cent of its GDP), while the latter receiving £1billion (60 per cent of its GDP).
Other Commonwealth members that supported Beijing's crackdown in Hong Kong have included Sierra Leone, where Chinese investment since 2005 amounts to 145 per cent of its GDP, Zambia, Lesotho, Cameroon and Mozambique.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has announced plans to replace the Commonwealth Development Corporation with a new body, British International Investment, to provide ‘up to £8billion’ of investment per year in Commonwealth countries by 2025. However, China hawks have slammed the Government’s late response to Beijing.
Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told The Telegraph: ‘They would like to undermine whatever they can internationally, so they can pick off countries and prevent anti-Chinese resolutions in the Commonwealth and elsewhere.
‘It is a very clever move and we have come late to the party by not really understanding the extent of this challenge.
‘China is commercially preying on the Commonwealth. The question is, can we respond with a better offering? Can the UK steer western investment funds into these places?’
Baroness Helena Kennedy, a prominent human rights barrister, added: ‘What China is doing is a way of making friends and it impacts on votes in the UN. Attempts to get a collaborative approach to things can be undermined so you end up with client states.
‘It has a serious impact, it starts being a return to the old Cold War scenario and that's not a healthy way for us to be going forward. The money they are investing does start to penetrate our areas of influence.
‘One wants to strengthen the Commonwealth, not find it undermined.’
Pakistan, which is the biggest recipient of UK Overseas Development Assistance, has received £60billion of investment from China, more than a fifth of its GDP, since 2005, and now buys 70 per cent of its arms from Beijing.
The Americans believe that the Pakistani government passes on those arms to the Taliban, which used them to defeat coalition forces in Afghanistan and destabilise the economy.
This has since provided China the pretext to move in and exploit the country's vast mineral deposits, including coal, copper, iron ore, oil and gemstones.
When recipient countries such as Sri Lanka cannot afford to repay the high interest loans, they are forced to hand over the assets used as security — which in this case was the Hambantota container port and 15,000 acres of land around it on a 99-year lease.
