China says it will respond if UK targets its officials

LONDON • China will respond resolutely to any attempt by Britain to sanction Chinese officials following the imposition of a national security law in Hong Kong, its ambassador in London said.

Earlier this month, Britain introduced a new sanctions regime to target individuals it says are involved in human rights abuses or organised crime.

Some lawmakers in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservative Party have said the sanctions should be used to target Chinese officials.

"If UK government goes that far to impose sanctions on any individual in China, China will certainly make a resolute response to it," Mr Liu Xiaoming told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show yesterday. "You've seen what happens in the United States - they sanction Chinese officials, we sanction their senators, their officials. I do not want to see this tit-for-tat happen in... China-UK relations."

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the same programme he would not be drawn on future additions to Britain's sanctions list, but he denied that Britain would be too weak to challenge China through this channel.

Mr Raab said he would update Britain's Parliament to outline further measures on Hong Kong and China today.

Britain says China's new law for the city breaches agreements made before the 1997 handover and that China is crushing the freedoms that have helped make the territory one of the world's biggest financial hubs.

Mr Raab also said yesterday that it was clear the Uighur minority in China had suffered abuses of their human rights. "It is clear that there are gross, egregious human rights abuses going on, which is why in Geneva at the UN, we raised this with 27 partners... to call out the government of China for its human rights abuses of the Uighurs, also of Hong Kong," he said.

REUTERS