cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/43755776

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The British government’s refusal to testify that China is a national security threat in a major espionage trial has signalled to Beijing that “the UK can be bullied”, according to a former senior diplomat who was due to be a prosecution witness in the now-collapsed case.

The warning comes after Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions (DPP), revealed that his team had repeatedly tried and failed to obtain witness statements from the government that said China was a threat to UK national security.

Prosecutors had to abandon the trial of two British men charged with spying on parliamentarians for China, just weeks before it was due to start, because of the government’s refusal to provide the evidence, Parkinson said in a letter to MPs on Tuesday.

Charles Parton, a former UK diplomat who spent more than two decades working on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, had been due to appear as a prosecution witness in the trial.

“In broad fashion, this [collapse] says to the Chinese, ‘yes, we can bully the British, they will crumble if we play hard ball in whatever the negotiation is’ — that’s the worrying thing to me”, he told the Financial Times.

The failed prosecution was, he added, “a missed opportunity to demonstrate clearly China’s espionage efforts, and to say to anyone thinking of betraying our national interest, that you will be caught and punished”.

Parton, now an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “There is absolutely no doubt China is a threat, and it’s a common sense point. A threat equals hostility, intent and capability. Well, each of those is very easy to prove.”

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