CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond will not visit China this weekend after a Tory colleague threatened to deploy warships in the Pacific.
The Chancellor was expected to meet Chinese vice-premier Hu Chunhua but Treasury sources insisted the trip was never confirmed amid reports Beijing pulled out of trade talks.
It follows claims in the Sun that Hu scrapped the plans hours after Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson delivered what one UK official told the Financial Times was an “idiotic” speech.
Speaking earlier this week, Williamson confirmed that aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth’s first operational mission will take place in the Pacific region, adding that the UK would be prepared to use “hard power” against nations which “flout international law”.
READ MORE: Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson sounds like a deluded fantasist
He explained the ship is to be equipped with F-35 fighter jets, purchased from the US, as he outlined ambitions to “strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality and increase our mass”.
“The UK is a global power with truly global interests. A nation with the fifth biggest economy on the planet. A nation with the world’s fifth biggest defence budget and the second largest defence exporter,” Williamson said.
“And since the new global great game will be played on a global playing field, we must be prepared to compete for our interests and our values far, far from home.”
The remarks were generally interpreted to include a warning to China, which has been involved in a dispute over navigation rights and territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Suggestions that Beijing had contacted the UK Government to voice their discontent after the speech were not denied by Downing Street.
“We have regular discussions with the Chinese government,” said Theresa May’s spokesman.
The deployment last September of a British ship, the HMS Albion, near the Parcel Islands in the South China Sea angered officials in Beijing.
There have been no executive talks between the UK and China since that incident.
READ MORE: Military chiefs turn on Gavin Williamson over 'crackpot' ideas at MoD
However, China had reportedly been expected to lift its bans on British poultry and cosmetics not tested on animals, which could have opened up access to markets worth around £10 billion over five years.
Yet anticipated discussions between the two nations will not go ahead after a Treasury spokeswoman yesterday announced: “The Chancellor is not travelling to China at this time. No trip was ever announced or confirmed.”
A source suggested the visit would be rescheduled when possible.
SNP MP Angus MacNeil, referencing 19th century moves by British imperialists to send gun boats to China during the Opium Wars, advised the Defence Secretary to brush up on his history.
He tweeted: “Who would ever have thought sending a gun boat the direction of China is not popular with the Chinese ... They probably have historical memory of such British aggression in the past, that UK has forgotten ... say in about 1840 and again 1857?”
Former chancellor George Osborne accused Williamson of engaging in “gunboat diplomacy” as he queried the UK Government’s foreign policy.
“I think it’s very difficult to work out what the British Government’s China policy is at the moment,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Week In Westminster.
“You’ve got the Defence Secretary engaging in gunboat diplomacy of a quite old-fashioned kind, at the same time as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary are going around saying they want a close economic partnership with China.
“Ultimately it’s the responsibility of Theresa May as Prime Minister to sort this out because at the moment it looks all at sea.”
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