China’s well-documented strategy of investing in British companies and infrastructure means that Beijing has a huge presence in Scotland with everything from whisky and beer to wind farms and North Sea oil and gas under Chinese control.
The Sunday Times has compiled ‘The China List’ – first published in 2021 and updated two years later – which shows the Chinese state owns UK assets worth £45billion. In total, Chinese and Hong Kong investors own a portfolio worth £152bn including huge stakes in companies such as HSBC, AstraZeneca, Shell, BP and Diageo.
Infamously, Beijing’s assets include a 33% stake in the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station and a 100% stake in UK Power Networks, which runs the power grid across London and south east England.
But one of the most lucrative investments is the 49% stake in Neptune Energy, a German firm with North Sea oil and gas assets. Over five years, it returned £294m in dividends to the China Investment Corporation.
Red Rock Renewables is based in Edinburgh, although it is a subsidiary of China’s State Development and Investment Corporation. In September, it was reported that Red Rock was looking to sell its portfolio of Scottish wind farms, which was valued at £500m to £700m.
They include the Beatrice offshore wind farm in the Moray Firth, which can power up to 450,000 homes, and the Afton and Benbrack onshore wind farms.
A new report by the China Chamber of Commerce in the UK shows that 4.1% of Chinese-owned companies in the UK are headquartered in Scotland – the highest percentage outside London and the south east of England. Also, 27.4% of Chinese firms in the UK have Scottish operations.
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Any country that lets Trump buy a golf course, has no standing for judging Chinese investments.
I thought foreign investment was good? Or is it automatically bad because it’s Chinese companies doing instead of white people?
Every single British success bought out by foreign capital has gone to shit. Every privatised public service owned by foreign capital funnels dividends overseas while allowing the infrastructure to root.
Thanks, Maggie!
The same happens to British public utilities purchased by local capital. Wasn’t the England water supply privatized to a British firm and now it runs like shit? Just going off my memory here
No? And there’s not one English water firm, there’s a whole bunch of them.
Ok, thanks for the correction. I just remember Scotland not wanting to privatize their water supply
This means foreign governments and private companies can extract money from UK ‘customers’, recycle it into buying yet more UK assets, strengthen themselves and - whenever they feel like it - deliberately run critical UK infrastructure into the ground for strategic reasons (see British Steel). All safe in the knowledge that anything they do is underwritten by UK taxpayer bailouts.
Our own politicians are pimping us out like crack whores and not only to China. Just think for a minute about how monstrously dependent the NHS is on Microsoft and what that means.
The biggest threat to national security isn’t jihadis or the Russians, it’s privatisation and global free market capitalism.
Yeah, I don’t understand why we keep pushing for foreign investment, it’s a bit of free cash today for us to be thoroughly shafted every day thereafter.
well I do understand, the piggies need their noses in the trough.
I think it’s a negatively compounding quick-fix. The more money that leaves the country as profits from foreign investment, the less there is left to invest yourself, so you need to go looking for even more, on worse and worse terms as you get smaller and smaller and they get bigger and bigger.
The biggest threat to national security isn’t jihadis or the Russians, it’s privatisation and global free market capitalism.
Why not “all of the above”?
Because weakening our democracy, sovereignty and real economy leaves us unable to protect ourselves from any threats, whereas the other two are just instances of threats. They aren’t fundamental and systemic.
Interesting. I do think it’s a threat if hostile entities own critical pieces of British infrastructure. But I think Russia is also a threat that should be remembered, and jihadis can be a threat too, and also violent criminals who might be motivated by Christianity, white supremacy, etc.
I agree
Yeah, there is a lot to be improved in the West to protect democracies. This is about China and the threat its government poses. China and Russia are the biggest threat to the rule of law and human rights.