Cameron has ‘no regrets’ over Chinese investment links
Posted on January 9th, 2024
By Arj Singh Courtesy inews.co.uk
The Foreign Secretary said he was supporting Sri Lanka over Beijing-funded development
Lord Cameron has said he has no regrets about backing a Beijing-funded development last autumn and dismissed concerns about his role as a senior figure in a mooted UK-China investment fund.
The Foreign Secretary has faced criticism over his links to China since being appointed to the role by Rishi Sunak, given the UK now regards the Asian giant as an epoch-defining and systemic challenge” – a far cry from the golden era” of relations with Beijing pursued by Lord Cameron as prime minister in the 2010s.
The peer has faced questions in particular about speeches he gave as recently as October in the United Arab Emirates in praise of the £16bn Port City Colombo business hub project in Sri Lanka, which counts as its main developer the state-owned China Communications Construction Company.
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Critics, including Conservative MPs, have said that the peer’s promotion of the project amounted to support of China’s controversial Belt and Road investment initiative, which China-sceptics see as a project Beijing uses to gain control in developing nations.
But appearing at the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Lord Cameron insisted he spoke only in support of Sri Lanka and that it was solely his decision – rather than that of the Chinese – to speak at the event.
Put to him that he was a friend of China until very recently”, the Foreign Secretary told MPs he did it [the speeches] as a friend of Sri Lanka” after being approached by the Washington Speakers’ Bureau, which offered the ex-PM’s services on the global VIP speaker circuit.
Lord Cameron also said he was supporting Sri Lanka’s former president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who believed the project was a good idea and who the peer had met earlier in 2023 while on holiday” in Sri Lanka.
Asked if he had any regrets about the speech, Lord Cameron told MPs: No.”
Lord Cameron also dismissed concerns raised by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) over his past role as vice-president of a new £1bn China-UK investment fund.
The ISC said last year it was possible” that Lord Cameron’s appointment had been in some part engineered by the Chinese state”.
Asked whether he agreed with the committee, which has access to highly classified information, Lord Cameron said: I might if it had ever happened but there was no fund – it never got going, it never started and it never happened.
So this is a bit like the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there.”