The United Kingdom has reportedly been sending millions of pounds sterling to the communist Chinese state in foreign aid, subsidising one of the world’s largest economies as well as one of the most totalitarian regimes on Earth.

Despite the growing tension between the two countries over China’s violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong and the UK’s decision to ban Chinese telecom Huawei from its 5G network, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has continued to ship millions to the dictatorship in Beijing.

An investigation carried out by the TaxPayers’ Alliance in conjunction with the Daily Mail, revealed that £81 million of British taxpayer money was sent to China, mostly between 2019 and 2020.

Stunningly, the report revealed that Britons spent £900,000 on preventing pandemics in China. The funding also went to study ‘zoonotic’ viruses which jump from animals to humans, as was believed to be the case with the Wuhan virus that continues to devastate the British economy.

Cash was also shipped to the world’s second-largest economic power to subsidise their agriculture industry, including projects funding research on rice production and apple harvesting.

The UK government splashed out on projects from British scientists to help China develop “the world’s first digital fully connected rice mill”, using artificial intelligence to yield “substantial production increases and cost benefits to the Chinese rice processing supply chain”.

A further £1 million in taxpayer money was spent on a campaign by the Global Challenges Research Fund to convince Chinese families to eat sweet potatoes in order to prevent obesity.

The Conservative Party chairman of the defence select committee, Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, said of the spending of taxpayer’s money: “Given how Beijing has leveraged its economic might to abuse international standards and norms, we should no longer be funding any aid programmes in China.”

Ellwood went on to say that rather than funding the CCP, “China’s errant behaviour should warrant consideration of sanctions”.

Conservative MP David Davis said: “There’s no excuse for gross wastage of taxpayers’ money at a time when we are struggling to cover the necessary and important costs of government.”

In more examples of foreign aid handouts, the British Council spent some £41 million to “research and promote the development of arts and culture” in China between 2016 to 2020.

Last year, over £290,000 was given to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to stage productions of The Bard in China, according to Arts Council England.

Another £500,000 was spent on adapting Shaun the Sheep, a Wallace and Grommit animated spin-off, for the Chinese market. The project in Shanghai aims to use AI to create an “immersive experience… that can be enjoyed by a wide [family] audience in China… while recognising China’s cultural context and value”.

More money still was spent on helping the superpower develop its wind energy industry, despite predictions that China will surpass the UK in that capacity by the end of the year.

The communist nation is constructing more wind farms than the whole world combined, yet Britain granted £3.5 million in four separate projects through the Newton Fund to bolster China’s energy production.

A government spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said: “Funding through the Newton Fund supports British scientists and researchers working across the world to tackle global issues such as climate change and driving economic growth and prosperity.”

The revelations come as Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is planning to introduce a temporary cut the UK’s foreign aid budget from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent, in light of the economic devastation caused by the Chinese coronavirus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly pushed for the foreign aid spending to return to normal levels by as soon as 2022. However, China is expected to continue receiving aid money until at least 2023.

The former leader of the Conservative Party, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said: “A country that is set to become the largest economy in the world, with plans to become the most powerful and threatening military power, guilty of widespread persecution of minority groups and aggressive behaviour to its neighbours – and UK Government officials, in the middle of an economic crisis, are sending them money.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here: @KurtZindulka