The United Kingdom’s populist right-leading light Nigel Farage stepped on a potential live wire on October 18 when he dared to ask out loud whether British citizens should question the controversial background of a top government official’s foreign-born wife. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is the UK’s treasury chief, and his wife – who hails from China – has significant ties to the communist regime.
Hunt unilaterally squashed new Prime Minister Liz Truss’ tax cut proposal on October 17. This led Farage to tweet: “As [Hunt] now runs our country, are we happy that his wife works for a Chinese State TV company?”
Curious Lack of Curiosity
In America, the thought of closely planted Chinese spies holding sway over elected officials has percolated for years, although none of the subjects involved in high-profile cases have yet faced serious investigation. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had a known Chinese spy on her personal staff for more than 20 years. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was targeted by an attractive Chinese spy going by the name of Fang Fang who, as reported by Axios, “took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, according to a Bay Area political operative and a current U.S. intelligence official.”
Neither Democrat suffered any meaningful blowback from the revelations. It might be even more difficult to dig into such intimate associations in notoriously politically correct England. This, after all, is the country that has enthusiastically embraced internet censorship on political speech and routinely dispatches police to investigate cases of hurt feelings based on supposedly hateful words.
As the anti-establishment Farage knows all too well, one must tread softly as the accusations of Sinophobic bigotry fly.
Family Ties and Friendly Words For China
Nevertheless, the facts are pretty straightforward. Hunt met his wife – Lucia Guo, who is 11 years younger than him – while she was working at Warwick University. Her job involved recruiting Chinese students to study in England.
As Liberty Nation has reported, the Red regime in Beijing has sought to use access to Western colleges to acquire valuable information, especially technology intelligence, that can be harnessed back home. “Americans must know how the Chinese Communist Party is poisoning the well of our higher education institutions for its own ends,” then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in December 2020.
Guo has raised even more eyebrows with her work for state-run Chinese television. Critics allege she has served to peddle propaganda material, downplaying China’s brutal suppression of its Muslim Uighur minority. UK newspaper the Daily Mail wrote in December 2021:
“[Guo] appears on China Hour, a series broadcast on Sky TV that showcases Chinese culture to a UK audience.
“It is made by the state-owned China International TV Corporation and British-based Dove Media, in partnership with the Communist regime’s tourist office in London.
“The program has featured reports on the effectiveness of China’s [coronavirus] pandemic response and about the beauty of the Xinjiang region without mentioning it is the site of ‘re-education’ camps for its persecuted Muslim Uighur population.
“Ms. Guo, who is originally from the city of Xi’an in central China, hosts a feature on the show called Signature Flowers of China.”
While his wife was painting a flowery face on the regime, Hunt was praising the Asian communist superpower for its handling of the COVID pandemic and, more disturbingly, going out of his way to swipe at Hong Kong freedom protesters.
Jeremy Hunt (Photo by Li Ying/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Video footage has re-emerged in recent days of Hunt praising China’s ruthless Zero COVID social curb policy. “We should be aiming for zero infection and elimination of the disease,” he says in the clip. “My sister flew back to Beijing in the middle of lockdown,” Hunt continues approvingly. “She was escorted from the airport in Beijing to her home by Ministry of Health officials, and then put into her home for two weeks of quarantine. The door was sealed, and she had a police car sitting outside her house periodically.”
“I’m not saying we go that far in this country,” Hunt concludes. “But I just think it’s an indication of how serious they are in countries that have had to deal with SARS. About stopping at the root every possible source of infection.”
In 2019, Hunt appeared on the BBC where, to the noticeable astonishment of his interviewer, he accused Hong Kong freedom protesters of seeking to intentionally induce a Tiananmen Square-style bloodbath. “There are some elements [of the freedom protesters] who are saying that only a military confrontation with China will show the world China’s true colors,” Hunt shockingly declared.
Americans of all political stripes should be deeply concerned over the lack of serious inquiry into the Feinstein and Swalwell espionage cases. As Jeremy Hunt climbs the political ladder in England, will his deeply personal ties to communist China be similarly swept under the rug?
