Shaun the Sheep and paddy fields: Where the money’s spent

FROM Shaun the Sheep in Shanghai to Shakespeare in Beijing – while China dwarfs Britain’s economy, we’ve been funding its prosperity, whether that’s boosting its arts industry or helping it produce rice.

China – a military superpower with a space programme – is on course to have the world’s largest economy within a few years. In spite of this, British taxpayers’ money is used to bolster the superpower.

Here, some of the most jawdropping examples of how YOUR money is being spent, are laid bare.

PANDEMIC PREVENTION

THE British taxpayer was – incredibly – funding schemes in China three years ago to avert a global pandemic like coronavirus.

Almost £900,000 was funnelled there with the aim of preventing an outbreak.

In 2017, £506,107 was allocated for a five-year study led by scientists at the Pirbright Institute, one of Britain’s leading infectious diseases laboratories, to investigate bird flu and virus transmission in China.

The report on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) website by the Department for Business, energy and Industrial strategy (BEIS), which funded the study, says: ‘ Avian influenza viruses... continue to cause severe economic losses to poultry production in China, and are increasingly isolated from humans and are therefore considered zoonotic viruses with pandemic potential.’

Zoonotic viruses ‘ jump’ from animals to humans, as has happened with bats and Covid-19.

A separate grant of nearly £378,892 was awarded in 2018 for a three-year research project in China to ‘ gene edit pigs to prevent a novel virus infecting humans’.

Pirbright scientists aimed to edit the genes of a pig that was immune to influenza viruses because ‘infections of pigs by avian influenza viruses can pre- empt the emergence of a novel influenza virus that infects humans.’

The report for the grant pointed out: ‘ Indeed the last influenza pandemic in 2009 had its most recent origin in pigs.’

It added: ‘ China is a major pig producer, where pigs are reared in large holdings under sometimes crowded conditions; a perfect breeding ground for the evolution and emergence of new strains of virus.

‘The high population in China, its geography and its climate make it a hotspot for emergence of influenza viruses.’

China also received at least £5.5millon over four grants, for the years 2018- 22, for research to tackle antibiotic resistance.

FUNDING FLOOD DEFENCES

As Britain struggled with serious flooding this year, more than £1million of UK taxes were diverted to help flood prevention and coastal defences in China. The newton Fund awarded two grants of £291,089 and £111,626 for coastal defence of the Pearl River Delta, one of China’s most important trade ports.

The project’s report says the region ‘is exposed to typhoons from the south China sea, as well as being one of the areas with a high density population most exposed to sea level rise’.

Two other grants of £290,963 and £ 351,649 were allocated to protect shanghai – China’s financial hub and the country’s largest city – and the sprawling metropolitan area surrounding the Yangtze River Delta against flood risk.

MAKING THE WEATHER PAY

The taxpayer-funded Meteorological Office has awarded £4million over four years for UK scientists to model China’s climate and assist its economy.

Britain’s national weather forecaster is part of the Climate science for service Partnership China (CSSP China), which has spent millions since 2014 on British

scientists mapping China’s climate and weather.

The CSSP China describes itself on the Met Office website as ‘a scientific research project that... [supports] climate and weather resilient economic development and social welfare through strong strategic partnerships harnessing UK scientific expertise’.

CASH TO BOOST WIND POWER

Millions have been earmarked for the research and development of offshore wind farms in China. The UK is currently the world’s largest producer of wind energy but China is set to overtake it by next year.

The £3.5million funding is being awarded over four years, ending in 2021, via the Newton Fund in five separate grants.

China is constructing more offshore wind capacity than the rest of the world combined, and is predicted to reach 52-gigawatt (GW) capacity by the end of the decade while Britain climbs to 40.3GW.

BOOSTING APPLE HARVESTS

A total of £338,391 will be spent over four years (2018-22) on technology to help China plant apples.

The project, called ‘Red Apple’, is intended to ‘improve yield and quality and reduce wastage in the apple supply chain, thereby reducing economic and social risks associated with apple production in North East China’. The technology will be scaled up to other Chinese fruit crops including pears.

A £1million campaign has been launched by the Global Challenges Research Fund to encourage Chinese families to eat sweet potatoes and prevent obesity.

THE BARD IN BEIJING

All the world’s a stage, and nowhere more so than China, where Shakespeare plays have been funded by British taxpayers. More than £290,000 was allocated to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in China last year, according to Arts Council England’s latest annual account (2019-20).

The RSC has a long- standing relationship with China and last year embarked on a six-month tour of 13 Chinese cities, staging a musical of Roald Dahl’s Matilda. In 2016 the RSC began its First Folio project, which aimed to complete 36 Chinese translations of Shakespeare’s works by 2023.

It debuted with a Mandarin production of King Lear at China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing in 2017.

In 2018 it began two years of its Chinese Cultural Exchange programme, staging The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Hamlet in cities across China.