As Beijing mobilizes against Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and London looks to lock Huawei out of its 5G future, Ango-Chinese relations are in freefall.
In 2015, George Osborne – then the U. K.’s finance minister – crowed that Britain was China’s “best partner in the West”.
What a difference five years can make.
As Beijing mobilizes against Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and London looks to lock Huawei out of its 5G future, Ango-Chinese relations are in freefall.
On Monday (July 6), things came to a head. The U. K. is guilty of “gross interference,” decried Ambassador Liu Xiaoming, Beijing’s man in Britain, in typically sharp-tongued fashion.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to offer millions of Hong Kongers a path to British citizenship – an escape route for those fleeing mainland China’s national security law – was the object of his ire.
‘The Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’, as the controversial new piece of legislation is officially known, seeks to stamp out the city’s pro-democracy unrest once and for all.
Denigrating China’s central government is now illegal, and acts of vandalism against public facilities – a regular occurance as protests hit fever pitch last year – can now be investigated as terrorism.
