China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it “firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government’s decision”.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a “vital national capability”.<\/p>\n
The UK took control of British Steel’s operations in Scunthorpe last year, though it was still owned by China’s Jingye Group, limiting the government’s ability to steer its future.<\/p>\n
China’s commerce ministry said on Friday that the moves “seriously infringed upon Jingye’s legitimate rights and interests and severely undermined the confidence of Chinese companies investing in the UK”.<\/p>\n
It also called on Britain to “faithfully fulfil” its obligations under the China\u2013UK Bilateral Investment Treaty.<\/p>\n
“Disregarding Jingye’s significant contribution to the UK economy and society, the British side forcibly took control of the company in the name of national security,” the ministry said.<\/p>\n
The statement added that Beijing would monitor developments closely and support Chinese firms to protect their rights, but did not specify what protecting Chinese companies’ rights might involve.<\/p>\n
The decision to nationalise British Steel threatens to strain the relationship between London and Beijing just as Andy Burnham is set to become the prime minister on Monday.<\/p>\n
The incoming PM will have to weigh his approach to the issue with the economic benefits of ties with the world’s second largest economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it “firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-696068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}