‘Shoppers should be able to boycott goods from China’
SHOPPERS should be able to shun Chinese goods more easily in protest at the Beijing regime, top Tory Sir Iain Duncan Smith has urged.
The former party leader said online buyers often do not realise they are ordering from China until it is too late.
The prominent critic of President Xi Jinping’s government called on ministers to take action.
He told LBC radio: “If you go on to an online website like Amazon and try to buy something, you don’t know where it comes from until it arrives in the package and of course it’s too late to deal with it then.
“Lots of people in my constituency and elsewhere have said ‘We’d like to say we’ll try and buy less from China because of the use of slave labour but we don’t know until that thing arrives’. I want [my Government] to do more, but the UK is no different from others around Europe in this regard. [China] is a dangerous and threatening country.”
Sir Iain, who has been sanctioned by Xi’s regime, said the Government must “show China we mean business” following confirmation that China spies were behind cyber attacks on the Electoral Commission and on individual MPs and peers. He said: “Sadly, we have looked unprepared to challenge China over their terrible abuses.
“We need to show China we mean business. There’s no good watching America do that and we don’t.
“We’re massively dependent on China now, the universities are so dependent on them for their students and student fees.”
Downing Street said it has an “eyes wide open” approach to China’s increasing authoritarianism but the Prime Minister’s spokesman said it is “up to individuals” to decide if they want to stop buying Chinese products.
He continued: “We will engage with China constructively when it is in our interests, but we have our eyes wide open when it comes to China.
“We have...taken action to, wherever necessary, protect our national interests and our critical national infrastructure.”