Taxpayers fund Chinese opera as foreign aid handed to overseas regions richer than parts of UK
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/21/taxpayers-fund-chinese-opera-foreign-aid-richer-regions-uk/
by Low_Map4314
Taxpayers fund Chinese opera as foreign aid handed to overseas regions richer than parts of UK
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/21/taxpayers-fund-chinese-opera-foreign-aid-richer-regions-uk/
by Low_Map4314
6 comments
I don’t mind the concept of international aid and development. Hell, we’ve seen China grow into using it more and more for geopolitics. We should begin to look at where it is going. There are countries far more in need of it.
This is fair, they infiltrate our universities, we infiltrate their operas.
> From 2009 to 2021, UK bilateral aid to China totalled £537 million. During this period, spending was highest in 2009, at £75 million. Aid was focused on priorities such as economic prosperity, climate change, and human rights.
Which party was in charge during that time? But hey, they almost got there:
> In 2021, then Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, said aid programming in China from the FCDO would be reduced by 95%, to £900,000. Any continuing FCDO programmes would focus on promoting democracy and human rights.
> In July 2023, the ICAI, which scrutinises the UK’s official development assistance, said UK aid to China has “fallen rapidly” and is expected to total £10 million in 2023/24 (centred on educational and cultural engagement, which did not form part of the government’s 2021 commitment).
Source: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9762/
Of course the Telegraph conveniently forgets to mention any of the above.
>breaking news! Taxpayer money has been wasted by the government!
Apparently China is still considered a country in development, so it receives so much international aid from many countries.
At the same time China is one of the biggest economies in the world, one of the biggest army, and one of the biggest money lenders.
Maybe they shoudl rethink whether China still deserves international aid.
Charity has to begin at home. The neo-colonial fantasies of the Oxbridge FCDO graduates need to be reigned in. They are not saving the world, they’re just funneling taxpayers’ money into corrupt shopping trips to Milan and Paris. The governments of the developing world are perfectly happy to take our aid spending and redirect it into their wardrobes and driveways.