After a leaked email indicated that a senior Treasury official had cautioned Downing Street against “antagonizing” China, the government has been accused of “appeasing Beijing.”
The mandarin sent an email to a top Cabinet Office official in which he criticized Japan’s initiative to combat China’s economic bullying of smaller nations.
This month, Japan assumed the leadership of the G7 club of wealthy nations and is attempting to coordinate a massive international assault against Beijing.
Japan accuses China of “economic coercion” for refusing to do business with smaller nations that oppose its policies, and is holding one-on-one calls with other G7 members.
Japan accuses China of “economic coercion” for refusing to conduct business with smaller nations that oppose its policies. Chinese President Xi Jinping is shown.
The Government has been accused of ‘appeasing Beijing’ after a leaked email revealed that a senior Treasury official had cautioned Downing Street against ‘antagonizing’ China.
However, the Treasury official in charge of Britain’s reaction to the G7 plan cautioned Downing Street that it posed a danger of angering China without helping the UK.
In an email, the official stated, ‘As I feared, the Japanese agenda consists of more words than actions, and we’ll need to address this with the others. All talk and no action is, in some respects, the worst of both worlds, as we would have antagonized [China] without bolstering our resilience and preparation.
All words and no action is the worst of all possible worlds.
Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party, told The Mail on Sunday last night that a leaked email revealed that “Deep in the heart of the British Establishment, Operation Kowtow is in full effect.”
Mr. Duncan Smith, who has suggested that the government is overly eager to appease China despite its aggressive foreign policy and human rights violations, added, “Not content with appeasing Beijing, it appears the Treasury is also eager to limit international efforts to curb its abuses.”
China has applied “economic coercion” to some of its trading partners, such as suspending imports of Taiwanese pineapples and Australian wine, according to a statement released by the Japanese government earlier this month. Tokyo urged the G7 nations to take a coordinated approach to preventing this “economic coercion.”
Japan’s minister of economics and trade, Yasutoshi Nishimura, stated that he expected “effective responses to economic coercion” to be a “major topic” during this year’s G7 conference.
Beijing retaliated by accusing the G7 of employing protectionist measures to thwart China’s economic rise, including US export restrictions on semiconductors to China.
»Leaked Cabinet Office email accuses government of “appeasing Beijing.”«