Month: December 2024

Ministers are coming under pressure to set a timeline to revive the foreign influence registration scheme (FIRS), which had been delayed until next year, and to put China on the enhanced category for threats…reports Asian Lite News

Keir Starmer has defended his government’s greater openness towards Beijing following revelations about an alleged Chinese spy who forged a close relationship with Prince Andrew, saying it was “important to engage”. 

Questioned for the first time about the case, amid calls from some MPs to change his approach on China, the prime minister refused to comment directly on Andrew or the royals, but said he was pleased with what he called progress on ties with Beijing. 

As part of the partial reset of relations with Beijing, Starmer met China’s president, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Rio, the first meeting between British and Chinese leaders in six years. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is expected to visit Beijing soon. 

“Of course, we are concerned about the challenge that China poses,” Starmer told a brief press conference in Bergen alongside the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, during a visit centred on cooperation over defence and clean energy. 

“I had a meeting with the [Chinese] president just a few weeks ago. Our approach is one of engagement, of cooperating where we need to cooperate, particularly for example on issues like climate change, to challenge where we must and where we should, particularly on issues like human rights, and to compete when it comes to trade. 

“So that’s the strategic approach that we’ve set out as a UK government. I’m not going to comment on Buckingham Palace or the royal side, because, by convention, the government never does.” 

Starmer went on: “It’s important to engage. Of course, we have to challenge where we must, but it’s better to engage to challenge than to stay aside, as it were, important to cooperate where we can on issues like climate change, which need that cooperation. So I’m very pleased with the engagement and the progress that we’ve made.” 

According to court documents, the alleged spy, who under a UK court order can be referred to publicly only as H6, was so close to the prince he was authorised to act on his behalf in an international financial initiative with potential partners and investors in China. 

In the judgment this month, which upheld the businessman’s exclusion from the UK, the judge found he had “won a significant degree, one could say an unusual degree, of trust from a senior member of the royal family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him”. 

Ministers are coming under pressure to set a timeline to revive the foreign influence registration scheme (FIRS), which had been delayed until next year, and to put China on the enhanced category for threats. 

Asked about progress of the scheme, Starmer said only: “We’ve been working on it from day one in government, and there will be an update coming shortly.” 

Conservative MPs who are more resistant about links to China have warned that the case involving Andrew is almost certainly just a tiny part of wider efforts by Beijing to forge links with influential people in the UK using what is known as its United Front Work Department. 

Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader who is seeking an urgent Commons question on Monday to quiz ministers about the issue, said the current case was just “the tip of the iceberg” of Beijing’s attempts to infiltrate the UK. 

“The fact is, there are many more like him in the UK,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “There are many more doing the job that he’s been doing, and the fact he was leaving the UK tells you that he realised at some point he was going to get caught. 

“The reality is that there are many, many more involved in exactly this kind of espionage that’s taking place now. The reality for us is very simple. China is a very clear threat.” 

Tom Tugendhat, another Tory MP who was formerly the security minister, told BBC One’s Breakfast: “I’m absolutely certain that there are members of the United Front Work Department who are active right now in attempting to influence journalism, academics, politics, and the whole lot. This is really the tip of the iceberg. 

“And so the story, I can understand why it’s been about Prince Andrew but it’s not really about Prince Andrew. It’s about the way the Chinese Communist party is seeking to exert influence here in the United Kingdom.” 

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Claims surrounding businessman Yang Tengbo put spotlight on whether to designate China as enhanced risk…reports Asian Lite News 

An alleged spy who befriended Prince Andrew has been named as the businessman Yang Tengbo, amid a row at the heart of government over how to deal with influential Chinese nationals. 

The allegations surrounding Yang have cast a spotlight on the government’s plans for a foreign interests register and whether to designate China as an enhanced risk in the middle of Labour’s new charm offensive towards Beijing. 

The security minister Dan Jarvis said a planned shake-up of security laws that would require those working for a foreign government to declare this or face criminal prosecution would now not be ready until summer 2025. His Tory predecessor Tom Tugendhat said MI5 had advised that the scheme would be pointless unless it designated China as the highest risk. 

Yang, who split his time between the UK and China for almost two decades, ran the Duke of York’s Pitch@Palace in China – a Dragons’ Den-style project. He was also given authority to act on the prince’s behalf in Chinese business dealings, according to court documents. 

He was also pictured with two former Conservative prime ministers, Theresa May and David Cameron. Yang is also known to have met a number of other politicians, including the former deputy prime minister John Prescott. 

In a statement, Yang insisted he was not a spy and had done “nothing wrong or unlawful” and had asked the high court to lift the anonymity order so he could challenge “ill-founded” claims against him. 

Jarvis told the Commons on Monday the government would lay the regulations for foreign influence registration scheme (Firs) in the new year with it going live in summer 2025. He said no decision had been taken on whether to designate China as an enhanced risk. 

Under Firs there would be a basic level of declarations, called the political influence tier, and an enhanced tier, for countries deemed a threat to national security such as Russia. 

Tugendhat said that Yang would have been covered under the scope of Firs if it had been in place. Speaking in the Commons on Monday, the Tory MP said his officials had told him the scheme was ready and questioned why the government was delaying. “The advice from MI5 was very, very clear. If China isn’t in the enhanced tier it’s not worth having,” Tugendhat said. 

A business source said there was a split between the Home Office, which wants China to be designated a threat to national security under the scheme, and the Treasury, which is relaying concerns about the burden on businesses. “That fight is under way again in Whitehall,” the source said. 

A Conservative source said Rishi Sunak’s government had decided to include China in the enhanced tier after a similar debate took place internally. 

“The City had some concerns that they would have to be putting on reams of paperwork for whatever deal they did,” they said. It was reported in the spring that leading banks and other financial services firms included HSBC, Standard Chartered and Prudential were lobbying ministers to tone down the plans. 

However, the Conservative source said all departments including the Treasury eventually came round to the decision to include China in the enhanced scheme. 

Ministers are simultaneously carrying out a cross-Whitehall audit of the UK-China relationship, which insiders now expect to conclude in March. 

Yang, 50, the former chair of Hampton Group, a consultancy firm, had been in the UK for almost two decades. He was first stopped by counter-terrorism services in 2021 and ordered to surrender his devices. 

In February 2023, Yang was “off-boarded” from a flight from Beijing to London and in March he was excluded from the UK. His appeal against the decision was rejected last week by the special immigration appeals tribunal (Siac). 

The businessman had visited the UK regularly, attending events at a series of royal residences including Andrew’s birthday party at the prince’s Windsor home. 

The hearing heard Yang was barred because he was believed to be associated with China’s United Front Work Department, which seeks to gather intelligence on influential overseas nationals. The ruling said in his witness statement Yang had “downplayed his links” with the group. 

In a statement on Friday, Andrew’s office said he had stopped all contact with the man, whom he had met through “official channels” with “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”. The duke is to stay away from the royal family’s traditional Christmas gathering at Sandringham this year amid the controversy. 

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