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Questions raised about China’s funding and management of UK’s nuclear power project

Nuclear venture raises questions about UK-China relationship George Osborne says Britain wants to be China’s best partner in the west, but open-door approach raises security issues, Guardian  Julian Borger and Emma Graham-Harrison, 23 Sept 15, Britain’s open-door policy towards Chinese nuclear investment has raised fresh questions about relations with Beijing: is it an adversary, a partner or a bit of both?

For years, intelligence officials – in particular the electronic surveillance centre GCHQ – have warned that Chinese hacking attacks are one of the most substantial threats to Britain’s cybersecurity. When the Foreign Office announced in 2011 that it had repelled an attack on its internal communications from “a hostile state intelligence agency”, officials briefed that China was the culprit.

Now George Osborne says Britain wants to be “China’s best partner in the west”, and to that end Chinese companies will be permitted to build a nuclear power station in Bradwell, Essex, possibly the first of several such ventures. The dissonance has not gone unnoticed.

“All western countries are torn between their desire to cash in on China’s rise and their fears about China’s longer-term intentions,” said Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The United States goes to great lengths to try to protect their critical infrastructure from China – from stoppingChina from investing in oil companies and windfarms to placing limits on telecoms companies like Huawei. Americans are slightly horrified by the open-door approach of the UK government, which welcomed Huawei to protect the London tube and to run its nuclear power stations.”

China already owns a significant slice of the UK’s strategic infrastructure. …….

Prof Steve Tsang, a senior fellow of the China policy institute at Nottingham University, said: “It clearly shows that the UK’s China policy and energy policy are now made by the Treasury, not by the Foreign Office and energy department.” http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/22/nuclear-venture-questions-uk-china-relationship-security

September 23, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general