Coronavirus: did Boris Johnson’s dad’s email blunder reveal China is unhappy with Britain?

Email to minister, copied to BBC, suggests Chinese ambassador complained about lack of support from British prime minister since outbreak

But ambassador says lines of communication are open and he is thankful to the British government

Reading Time:3 minutes

Boris Johnson with his father Stanley, who emailed details of his meeting with Chinese officials to the BBC. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 10:29pm, 6 Feb 2020Updated: 5:50pm, 14 Feb 2020

The father of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a Chinese envoy was “concerned” his son had not sent a personal message of support about the coronavirus, in an email about his visit to China’s embassy in London that he says he accidentally sent to the BBC.

Stanley Johnson – an environmental campaigner and former head of the UN environmental agency UNEP – met Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to Britain, to discuss this year’s UN climate change conference COP26, to be held in Scotland, and the biodiversity COP15 meeting in Kunming, China.

Neither made any secret of the meeting on Wednesday, tweeting about it afterwards, but when Stanley Johnson – who has no official government role – emailed a government minister about it from his personal address, he said, he accidentally copied in Britain’s state broadcaster.

Johnson Snr’s email said Liu was “concerned” at the absence of “direct contact between the PM and Chinese head of state” about the coronavirus.

China has praised countries including Japan for gestures of support during the outbreak that emerged in late December, which by Thursday had caused at least 564 deaths domestically and more than 28,000 confirmed infections, as well as spreading around the world.

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