End of the Chinese foreign aid farce

Superpower to get 95% less British cash Controversial target cut to 0.5%

FOREIGN aid to China will be slashed by 95 per cent among £4billion worth of cuts to the UK’s international development budget.

Funding to the country will be restricted to projects that promote human rights, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said yesterday.

The move comes a decade after the Government vowed to stop sending cash to the world’s second largest economy. The Daily Mail has repeatedly highlighted how money was being lavished on projects including boosting the Chinese film industry, reducing salt in diets and developing offshore wind farms.

Mr Raab yesterday set out details of the cuts as the Government drops its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on international development. Overseas funding will fall to £10billion this year – 0.5 per cent of GDP. This is £4billion lower than under the previous commitment.

In a written ministerial statement, Mr Raab told MPs the Government would ‘strive to ensure every penny... brings maximum strategic coherence, impact and value for taxpayers’ money’.

He added: ‘We will focus on core priorities for poverty reduction, including getting more girls into school, providing urgent humanitarian support to those who need it most, and tackling global threats like climate change, Covid recovery and other international health priorities.’

Mr Raab said Britain was still expected to be the third most generous aid donor in the G7 despite the cuts.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will be responsible for spending £8.1billion of the budget.

Around £1.3billion will go on global health programmes, £906million on humanitarian crises, £534million on tackling climate change and £400million on girls’ education.

Mr Raab said spending on China by his department would be cut by 95 per cent this year. This will leave £ 900,000 for projects promoting human rights. There may also be some further costs from shutting down all other programmes.

Schemes funded with UK taxpayers’ money in China have included photography projects to understand the country’s past and syphilis tests for gay men.

A Department for Food and Rural Affairs project to encourage Chinese shoppers not to buy products made using pangolins was given £33,335 in 2019. The endangered species is killed for use in traditional medicine, as a meat delicacy and as a healing tonic.

Critics had questioned why money was still flowing to Beijing while it spends billions on its drive to become a leading power in space exploration. Next month China is expected to land a probe on Mars.

Labour MP Sarah Champion, chairman of the Commons international development committee, last night said it was ‘very surprising that China was still receiving money’.

She also urged the Government to publish details of how much money will be going to other countries.

Charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and Christian Aid released a joint statement condemning the wider cuts as a ‘tragic blow for many of the world’s most marginalised people the UK once supported, and for the country’s reputation as a trusted development partner’.

‘When other nations are stepping forward... the UK has instead chosen to step back,’ they added.

Half of the total aid budget will be spent in Africa, with a third going to the Indo-Pacific and South Asia.