British Steel should be the “canary in the coalmine” that forces ministers to remove Chinese companies from critical infrastructure, they have been told. The government was forced to take direct control of the company amid concern that its Beijing-based owners would not keep the plant running at Scunthorpe. Ministers feared the company planned to “sabotage” the site to increase British reliance on cheap Chinese imports, The Times understands. There is alarm over Chinese involvement in other areas of critical infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants. “It is an explicit strategy of the Chinese Communist Party to undermine the industrial base of foreign countries,” said Luke de Pulford, executive ­director of the Inter-Parliamentary ­Alliance on China, an international group of politicians that scrutinises Beijing’s approach to

Source: The Times April 13, 2025 21:34 UTC