Question: It is reported that on 8 June, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his visit to the United States said that countries like China and Russia are willing to steal intellectual property, abuse technology, or withdraw crucial resources. What is your comment?

Embassy Spokesperson: Such allegation related to China from the UK side is malicious groundless smearing. The Chinese side strongly deplores it.

China is a major creator of intellectual property and is committed to intellectual property protection. According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China topped the world in terms of the number of effective patents in force in 2021. Innovation and intellectual property is not a “patent” owned by the UK and the US, and the right to use technology and promote economic and social progress is by no means a right exclusively reserved for some individual countries. Innovation and intellectual property should serve the progress and welfare of all humankind and must not be reduced to a tool of a few countries to suppress others.

If anyone is to blame for the abuse of technology, it is definitely not China. It is the US and the UK that have kept overstretching the concept of national security. They are the ones that are politicising and weaponising technology-related issues to stifle the technological advancement of other countries.

The rhetoric of China withdrawing crucial resources is aimed at obstructing China’s cooperation with relevant countries and is driven by political agenda. China has always followed the principles of equality and mutual benefit in our overseas resources cooperation for win-win outcomes and common development, and China is now the main trading partner of more than 140 countries and regions. 

We urge UK politicians to respect facts, stop parroting others and stop making an issue out of China. Doing the opposite benefits no one and will lead nowhere.