Letters: Our private schools are China’s next target

Ka-shing in

Sir: Ian Williams highlights (‘Chasing the dragon’, 3 May) the degree to which the Chinese state has acquired interests in the UK. Yet he overlooks a few tentacles of the Asian octopus that have curled around my home region of eastern England. Swathes of high-quality arable land are being subsumed into solar farms, panels for which are manufactured in China. The resultant electricity will be distributed by UK Power Networks, controlled, as Ian points out, by Li Ka-shing. East Anglia’s biggest brewer, Greene King, has been China-owned since 2019, held by Li Ka-shing through CK Asset Holdings.

Our government seems craven in its attempts to lure Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein to list on the London Stock Exchange. Core to the business model of this company, and its fellow Chinese rival Temu, is the exploitation of a tax loophole that allows them to avoid UK import duty or VAT. Their commercial success therefore comes at the expense of UK online and physical retailers. Is it too much to ask that domestic investment (as well as foreign) should be encouraged, and that the fruits of our government’s ‘Growth, growth, growth’ strategy should accrue to British citizens?

School ties

Sir: Ian Williams paints a disturbing picture of how far the Chinese have their claws embedded in British businesses, institutions and infrastructure. You can also add independent schools to that list. My alma mater, Plymouth College (founded 1877), has been bought by a Chinese company, Galaxy Global Education Group, which also owns three other British fee-paying schools. I imagine there will be many more similar takeovers as independent schools struggle to stay afloat after the imposition of 20 per cent VAT on fees.