On Thursday, a story went viral in the British media after staunch anti-China politician Iain Duncan Smith announced to the House of Commons that MI5 had circulated a memo stating that a China-linked British national, Christine Lee, had sought to exercise “interference” in British politics on behalf of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Lee, a lawyer who runs a China-Britain friendship group which facilitates “people-to-people exchanges,” gave donations to politicians, including Labour MP Barry Gardiner, who received more than £420,000 ($575,730), although it is not conclusive whether this was related to any specific policy objectives.
Despite this, the media seized the story and ran amok, branding her an “agent” and a “spy,” and blowing it out of proportion. They painted her actions as representing a full-scale plot by Beijing to dominate British politics, despite the fact that Home Secretary Priti Patel was forced to admit that Lee had not committed a crime and would not be prosecuted as a foreign agent.
That Duncan Smith publicized the warning from the British security service is no surprise; he is the UK’s primary and most relentless anti-Beijing cheerleader who has sought to push the government in a more hawkish direction wherever possible, primarily through the unhinged anti-China “Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China” (IPAC) group.
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