The UK Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to reduce funding to the UK-China Center (GBCC). It appeared on Thursday.
Thursday’s Spectator magazine confirmed the decision, citing a statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth Development (FCDO) and citing financial reasons.
Founded in 1974, GBCC is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth Development (FCDO) and works to strengthen relations between the UK and China by mediating dialogue between the UK governments. doing. Parliament; the legal, judicial, and academic departments and their Chinese counterparts.
GBCC is primarily funded through Official Development Assistance from FCDO, the European Union, and bilateral donors, and corporate sponsorship.
According to the center’s latest annual report (pdf), FCDO subsidies to GBCC, issued in October 2021, have been confirmed to be £ 500,000 ($ 603,000) for the 2021-202 fiscal year.
The report also states that the grant will cover 61% of GBCC’s budget core operating costs, with the rest being “income from externally funded projects and sponsorships, and if necessary from reserves”. Said.
audience The magazine on Thursday quoted the FCDO statement and confirmed that it had decided to stop funding GBCC for financial reasons.
“Due to the current financial situation, including the reduction of official development assistance, we have decided to end FCDO’s grant aid to GBCC,” FCDO reportedly said.
“We will rebalance our aid budget, how it will be spent on our key priorities of helping women and girls, making honest and reliable investments, and providing humanitarian aid. It will allow the UK to manage more accurately. “
This is because the UK is dealing with “inflationary pressures worsening in Ukraine after COVID”. It also comes after British Foreign Minister Liz Truss warns the Chinese Communist Party administration to make a “catastrophic miscalculation” by invading Taiwan.
At the NATO summit in Madrid on Wednesday, Truss said he was at risk of making the same mistakes that Russian President Vladimir Putin made in Ukraine.
The Foreign Minister also nominated Russia and China, saying that Taiwan called for an alliance to protect its country in April, saying that the free world also needs to “recognize the growing role that the economy plays in security.”
She warned that China’s economic and military rise over the last 40 years would reach a deadlock unless the governing system was “according to the rules.”
Wednesday NATO Named China For the first time as one of NATO’s strategic competitors, it is the first country to challenge the alliance’s “profit, security and value” and to undermine the rules-based international order.
The Epoch Times asked FCDO and GBCC for comment.
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Lily Zhou is a freelance writer who mainly covers the British news of The Epoch Times.