Just why is Britain still spending over £50 million a year in development aid to China? Despite it being the world’s second largest economy and investing in UK infrastructure projects, the latest statistical release by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office shows that in 2021 more than £50 million of bilateral aid money was spend there, putting it just outside the top 20 of countries which received the most UK aid. And this is after the UK government promised to phase out foreign aid making its way to Beijing.

Is China still a developing country, and if so then at what stage do we declare it finally to be developed?

The Foreign Office’s separately published development tracker shows 57 aid projects active in the country, many of them involved with climate change or the illegal wild animal trade. Money is also going to collaborative projects such as those involved in tackling microbacterial resistance.

Many of these projects may have worthy aims, but it does raise the issue of whether UK taxpayers’ money should be going to public sector organisations in a country where the government has a blatant disregard for human rights and, in the case of medical research, organisations which have lamentable biosecurity. While it might seem a good idea to cooperate on medical projects like microbacterial resistance a very large shadow hangs over Chinese state science. A US Senate report concluded that it was more likely than not that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, originated in a laboratory in China, from which it leaked into the population. Emails from British scientists released last week revealed that there was widespread concern about biosecurity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – and yet western money was funding research into viruses there.

But the revelation of how much UK aid money is still going to China raises another question: is China still a developing country, and if so then at what stage do we declare it finally to be developed and thus have no further need of development aid? China, it seems, likes to have it both ways – depending on what is in its best interests. It certainly wants us to think of it as a developed country when it is boasting of its high-speed railways, its huge expansion of airports and its lunar research programme.

When it comes to climate change, on the other hand, China very much wants us to think it is still a developing country. It wants nothing to do with joining western countries in making payments for ‘loss and damage’ claimed to result from man-made climate change. On the contrary, it thinks it should be a recipient of the money – in spite of having the second-largest cumulative carbon emissions since 1750 of any country. Like so many countries, it seems willing fully to engage in efforts to cut carbon emissions only if the West is prepared to pay it to do so.

In terms of GDP per capita, China currently ranks 79th in the world, at $16,842 annual output. That compares with the UK which is 26th with $44,920. China is not wealthy in this sense, though it does rank above three European countries: Serbia ($15,432), North Macedonia ($15,290) and Bosnia ($13,108). But with every new airport, every new high speed rail line, it becomes harder to see China as poor, nor why its government bodies should be in receipt of cash transfers from Britain.

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