Labour attacked after giving £170 million to the People's Republic of China

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...aid-China.html

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Labour was blasted last night by one of its former ministers for spending £170million of taxpayers' money on aid to China, the world's third largest economy. Ministers were told that it was 'wrong' that such huge sums should be handed to a country that was able to splash out £20billion hosting the Olympic Games in 2008. Britain has given Beijing on average £34.5million a year since 2004-05 to boost its schools, tackle Aids and provide fresh water. Senior peers yesterday questioned whether it was right that development cash should be spent on China, which is forecast to become the biggest economic superpower on the planet within five years. Latest figures from the World Bank show China's GDP was £2.8trillion in 2008 - eclipsed only by the U.S. (£9.3trillion) and Japan (£3.2trillion).

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Baroness Symons - Tony Blair's former Middle East envoy and an ex Foreign Office minister - said it raised 'very, very important questions' about the Government's priorities. She acknowledged parts of China had 'real poverty and deprivation', but added: 'I would not have thought by any standards that China can resile from the responsibility of dealing with its own poverty given its enormous and growing wealth.' She said: 'The primary responsibility for dealing with that poverty should be with the government which is now presiding over a huge and growing economy, an enormous sovereign wealth fund and which is such a strong competitor to our own companies when they are doing business abroad.'

The Conservatives have pledged to shake up Britain's £9.1billion overseas aid budget by cutting funding to more prosperous developing nations, and axing China's aid outright after 2011. International Development Minister Lord Brett said China received 'only a very small part of our aid budget'. 'It is not about helping the Chinese government, it is about helping poor Chinese people,' he added.

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I am against continous state aid of any type anyway even with China out of the picture. I believe it should be upto the people (your parents, my parents, the taxpayers) to give aid if they wish and not upto the state to allocate it and with lower taxes (smaller state) that would be possible. To this point/issue; we are in enormous and growing amounts of debt and our NHS cannot afford cancer drugs for British people yet this government still sees it fit to allocate our money to China which is a country that spends billions on a nuclear arsenal, a military and space programmes every year.

When will this madness stop? - Thoughts

What a country to donate to lol maybe we donated to their human rights department.......... We need to borrow all this money yet we give away so much :o

Stop ALL foreign aid NOW

If you want to donate your hard earned money to charities here or abroad then so be it but the government donation on our behalf is a disgrace :o When there is a disaster let the charities appeal for our private donations but our government should not get involved. We have seen all these dictators driving around in gold plated Rolls Royces bought from our foreign aid which very rarely gets to the people who its aimed for.

Oh no, Africa doesn't need our help does it. They are morons. And what will we get in return? A nuke on london.

Africa has had more than enough help but most the money has gone to the wrong people (Dictators living it up). Surely they should have got farming tools and equipment mainly so they could produce their own food and be self sufficient instead of rice etc that once eaten is gone for good. Now they expect the world to give them food for free so lots like to sit there waiting to be looked after instead of trying to improve their country. Look at the white farmers ran out of Zimbabwe and how the blacks who got this land from them have let it become fields of weeds with no attempt to carry on growing what was there before which has seen their farming industry collapse. I am sick of looking after everybody elses problems when we have more than enough of our own needing a huge amount of attention.

i feel like screaming, that is just madness

it's like giving a millionaire $100 lol

It's one of those moments you just wished the basic idea behind the Robin Hood Tax existed :/

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

It's one of those moments you just wished the basic idea behind the Robin Hood Tax existed :/

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it's one of them moments you feel like jumping off a bridge never mind robin hood

What i wanna know is why are we even giving any amount of money away in the current climate?

That is just crazy. My Chinese friend knows first hand how corrupt the Chinese Government are, and boy they're very corrupt! I expect that money we gave them will go on weapons or to buy the top dogs new houses and cars. :rolleyes: My friend explained that, for example, if a Chinese council needed £1million to build a new park they would request £10million and they would keep the other £9million to spend on themselves. Not good.

And the other point is China is so rich, why do they need our money? Shouldn't WE be spending it HERE?

ridiculous. china runs up budget surpluses enough to buy billions of dollars worth US treasury bonds in order to keep its yuan artificially low. it could afford to do something about it - it just doesn't. China is very much for the some at the expense of the many.