China snubs England as Beijing shuts Visa centres over new strain -but Scottish sites open
CHINA has dealt a snub to England by suspending operations at its London and Manchester visa centres, but its Scottish centre will remain open.
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China’s embassy in London announced the centre would suspend operations, “in accordance with the relevant pandemic prevention advice". The Chinese visa centre in Manchester will also close “due to the serious local pandemic situation". However, the visa centre in Edinburgh will remain open.
The news comes as a multitude of EU nations bans arrival from Britain to halt the spread of the new strain of coronavirus.
China has two visa-application centres in England, both will close temporarily.
The reason for closure is because of Beijing's fear of a new variant of the coronavirus spreads rapidly in Britain.
The new variant of coronavirus has eclipsed the original pure-strain version in many parts of southern England.
Now many countries around the world have blocked travel to and from Britain.
In November China barred non-Chinese travellers from entering the country from the UK.
This even included those with valid visas and residence permits.
Beijing cited rising UK coronavirus cases as the reason.
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However, at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak when UK politicians called for a ban on flights from China, the Chinese authorities labelled these commentators as racist.
Beijing has reported no new infections from coronavirus this week.
The news comes as Chinese scientists claim they have evidence that coronavirus originated in India in 2019.
It is the latest attempt by the politburo to use academics to pin the blame for the pandemic on different nations.
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The masterplan behind these attempts to re-write history is to make president Xi Jinping look like the most capable leader in the world.
The team of scientists from China put their evidence into a pre-print academic paper.
The paper suggested the virus originated in India in the summer of 2019.
However, the claim has been discredited by David Robertson, an expert from Glasgow University, who called the paper "very flawed".