Top figures in China’s Communist Party have access to key UK political figures through £500,000 taxpayer-funded quango
TOP figures in China’s Communist Party have access to key UK political figures through a £500,000 taxpayer-funded quango, it has emerged.
Ministers are now facing demands to scrap the Foreign Office-backed body after Labour donor Christine Lee was named as a suspected spy.
The Great Britain-China Centre works with the Communist Party’s international wing, the body said.
Labour’s Lord Mandelson is listed as honorary president.
Ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “We should cut the money. China is hell-bent on global domination.”
Sam Armstrong, of the Henry Jackson Society, think-tank, added it was “plain dangerous” to subsidise opportunities for the Communist Party.
But the Foreign Office said last night: “The Great Britain-China Centre enables the UK to . . . hold China to account.”
