Lord Mandelson met Chinese official in charge of ‘targeting people viewed as threats to regime’

Lord Mandelson, the incoming British ambassador to the US, met a Chinese official who led Beijing’s “programme of transnational intimidation”, it has emerged.

In June 2023, the Labour peer was pictured shaking hands with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bigwig Liu Jianchao – a man who has been labelled a “horrific thug” who “ruthlessly hounded” enemies of the Chinese state.

A press release on the CCP’s international department’s website says Mandelson and Liu met to discuss “strategic communication with major political parties in the UK” and the “positive development of UK-China and EU-China relations”.

And following the trip, Bloomberg reported that China had asked Mandelson to push Western businesses to return and expand in the east Asian powerhouse after the pandemic.

But by the time the pair met, Liu had been leading China’s Operation Fox Hunt for eight years – an operation which claims to repatriate Chinese individuals accused of corruption, but has faced accusations of being used to repress Hongkongers and Uyghur Muslims.

After the US charged eight people connected with Fox Hunt, then-FBI director Christopher Wray described the programme as an example of “China’s ongoing and widespread lawless behaviour” in which China was “surveilling, stalking, harassing and blackmailing our citizens”.

In 2020, Wray said: “Fox Hunt is a sweeping bid by General Secretary Xi and the Chinese Communist Party to target Chinese nationals here in the United States and across the world who are viewed as threats to the regime.”

After The Times brought the photo to light, Luke de Pulford, founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: “Liu Jianchao had responsibility for Beijing’s programme of transnational intimidation.

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“Under his leadership, Uyghurs, Hongkongers and others were ruthlessly hounded, their families threatened and some even illegally abducted.

“No self-respecting UK politician would be happy to be pictured alongside that horrific thug.”

But a friend of Mandelson told the newspaper: “There is nothing sinister about this. Peter has had a long-standing interest in Sino-British relations and served two terms as the president of the Great Britain China centre, which is sponsored by the Foreign Office.

“The British Embassy and No10 have always been keen to have channels to China, and Peter has always been very open about that. He doesn’t hold back from criticising China directly during those meetings.”

It’s the second report on Mandelson’s connection to China in a matter of days – earlier this week, Australian outlet The Nightly revealed that a dossier on his business links to Beijing was passed to the FBI by US Senators.

The file, put together by De Pulford’s Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, is said to detail Mandelson’s role as an adviser to the China-based global investment bank CICC, a connection which he did not declare in the House of Lords register.

Asked whether he was confident of passing a US security check given his business dealings in China, Mandelson told The Nightly: “I have had no business dealings in China.”

And despite Sir Iain Duncan Smith’s warning that the file’s contents were “damning”, Mandelson has since been handed Donald Trump’s approval to take up the role of Britain’s ambassador to the US.