Britain has been secretly sending millions of pounds in aid to China over the past six years, a period in which the UK has done all it can to cultivate a new \u2018golden era\u2019 of ties with Beijing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been revealed that the Department for International Development\u2019s (DFID) official figures on aid spending are actually wrong.<\/p>\n
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) revealed the true figure in a report published on Wednesday, in which it found that ministers have \u201cnot clearly communicated to the public<\/em>\u201d continued aid spending on China.<\/p>\n An investigation set up to scrutinize aid payments found that the UK continues to spend \u00a310 million a year on initiatives in China managed from the UK.<\/p>\n Although direct aid ended, as planned, in 2011, indirect aid has continued to fund 18 projects in health, agriculture, disaster management, water, forests, trade, mining, energy, conflict and security.<\/p>\n Indirect aid has also continued to India, including \u00a330 million in \u201ctechnical assistance<\/em>\u201d and \u00a340 million for \u201cdevelopment capital investment<\/em>.\u201d The UK has sent \u00a3283 million a year to India annually since 2011.<\/p>\n The ICAI report says: \u201cThe earlier publicity given to exit from China and India potentially created an impression that all aid was being phased out. Against that background, the reasons for continuing and then scaling up assistance have not been clearly communicated to the UK public.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The International Development Committee has accused DFID of being \u201cdiffident about admitting<\/em>\u201d its continued spending in middle-income countries.<\/p>\n British aid to China has been funneled through the UK\u2019s \u00a350 million global development partnership program, which aims to \u201cstrengthen<\/em>\u201d the UK\u2019s relationship with emerging powers.<\/p>\n The UK has also increased aid to China through its \u00a31.3 billion Prosperity Fund, which encourages economic reform and growth to support British defense and security.<\/p>\n London\u2019s continued financial support for China coincided with former Chancellor George Osborne\u2019s aggressive courtship of Beijing, which culminated in a series of lucrative business deals signed between the UK and China last autumn, when President Xi Jinping was in Britain on a state visit.<\/p>\n Responding to the ICAI report, DFID said: \u201cWe are disappointed that ICAI has rushed the publication of this inaccurate report that simply does not tell the whole story.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe UK and China work closely to tackle global poverty and promote economic development in Africa, global health, international disaster relief, and opportunities for women and girls.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Britain has been secretly sending millions of pounds in aid to China over the past six years, a period in which the UK has done all it can to cultivate a new \u2018golden era\u2019 of ties with Beijing. It\u2019s been revealed that the Department for International Development\u2019s (DFID) official figures on aid spending are actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-279673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}