China on Tuesday said claims that a businessman had used his links with Britain’s Prince Andrew to spy for Beijing were “preposterous”, after the UK government voiced mounting concerns over the allegations.
Details emerged last week about Andrew’s relationship with Yang Tengbo, a businessman and alleged spy, who had been banned from Britain.
Asked about the case while on a visit to Norway, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain was “concerned about the challenge that China poses” but defended his approach of “engagement” with Beijing.
A spokesman for Beijing’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the “accusations of so-called Chinese espionage are preposterous”.
“The development of China-UK relations is in the common interests of both countries and is also conducive to promoting world economic growth and responding to global challenges,” Lin Jian said.
“It is hoped that the United Kingdom will work with China to accumulate more positive factors and demonstrate the two countries’ innate character of cooperation, mutual benefits and common wins,” he added.
Yang, who was reportedly once invited to Andrew’s birthday party, said in a statement on Monday that he had “done nothing wrong or unlawful”, and had “fallen victim” to a changing “political climate”.
“The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue,” Yang added, noting he had opted to waive his anonymity and was appealing against the UK decision.
Starmer said at a news conference in Bergen, Norway, that Britain’s approach towards China involved “cooperating where we need to cooperate, particularly, for example, on issues like climate change, to challenge where we must and where we should”.
On Thursday, British judges upheld a ban on Yang entering the country on the grounds that the government had been “entitled to conclude that his exclusion was justified and proportionate”.
The ruling, in which Yang was referred to only as H6, said he was well placed to “generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State”.
Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that Yang had also met former Conservative prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May.
“When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded,” Yang said in his statement.
The opposition Conservative party has criticised Starmer over his China strategy, with its former leader Iain Duncan Smith saying Yang’s case was the “tip of the iceberg” of Beijing’s espionage activities in Britain.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy pushed back, saying the UK “(recognised) the threat” and had raised it with the Chinese government.
Starmer, who took power in July after his Labour party won a landslide election, last month became the first British prime minister since 2018 to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
He has sought to reset bilateral ties that frayed in recent years under the former Conservative government, as tensions mounted over trade, human rights and Beijing’s crackdown in the former British colony of Hong Kong.
Both London and Beijing have previously said the other side poses an espionage threat.
