Boris Johnson pledges to create G7 rival to Beijing's Belt and Road global economic expansionism

Boris Johnson has pledged to combat China’s economic expansionism by setting up a rival to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organisations.

The Prime Minister addressed five MPs and members of the House of Lords hit by sanctions from Beijing – including former party leader Iain Duncan Smith – telling them that he was planning to commit ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ alongside other G7 countries.

Hosting the parliamentarians, all members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, in the No 10 garden, he said: ‘China has been buying up great chunks of the world, and indebting countries across Africa. 

‘We need to give the developing world a choice between their system and ours.’

Boris Johnson has pledged to combat China’s economic expansionism by setting up a rival to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organisations

Veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger has said the US will have to reach a mutual understanding with China on a new global order to ensure stability or the world will face serious unresolved tensions in future.

Kissinger, 97, speaking at a Chatham House event in London via Zoom, said: ‘If we don’t get to an understanding with China . . . then we will be in a pre-World War I-type situation in Europe, in which there are perennial conflicts that get solved on an immediate basis but one of them gets out of control at some point. It is infinitely more dangerous now than it was then’.

US ‘deliberately let China eavesdrop on a call to Dominic Raab to send a message to the Communist Party in Beijing’

By Glen Owen, Political Editor for the Mail on Sunday

US officials deliberately held a phone call with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab over an insecure line to allow the Chinese government to eavesdrop on their discussions about the origins of the coronavirus, Washington sources have told The Mail on Sunday.

Shortly before leaving office with President Donald Trump in January, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the call to inform Mr Raab of his plan to point the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, suggesting the pandemic arose following a leak from a laboratory.

A Washington source said Mr Raab had been ‘very supportive’ during the phone call, which also included the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand – the intelligence sharing group of nations known as Five Eyes – in late December.

US officials deliberately held a phone call with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab over an insecure line to allow the Chinese government to eavesdrop on their discussions about the origins of the coronavirus, Washington sources have told The Mail on Sunday

The source said: ‘We did it on an open phone to ensure the Chinese could hear it. We were sending a message – we wanted to tell the Chinese. 

‘They have been prevaricating from day one, refusing to give us or you Brits any information day after day.

‘So the Secretary of State, based on the frustration between the State Department and our closest allies by the end of the year, wanted to send a clear message.’ 

However, a UK Government source said Mr Raab had not endorsed Mr Pompeo’s actions, and merely ‘listened as Pompeo set out what he was planning to do’.

Shortly before leaving office with President Donald Trump in January, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the call to inform Mr Raab of his plan to point the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, suggesting the pandemic arose following a leak from a laboratory

Two weeks later, Mr Pompeo announced that US intelligence agencies had identified workers at the WIV who had fallen ill with Covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019, weeks before the alarm was raised. 

He also said that WIV scientists were working on secret military projects and experimenting with a bat coronavirus very similar to the one which causes Covid.

State Department officials, now reporting to Joe Biden, do not believe the virus leak was deliberate, rather that it was a catastrophic accident caused by poor safety procedures.