Tom Tugendhat, a senior British lawmaker from the Conservative Party who is also the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee opined, Britain must defend its companies against overseas takeovers in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis while adding that China’s state-owned companies have drawn on state banks to outbid rivals.

“Increasingly, China’s state-owned enterprises have been able to draw on state banks to outbid rivals in Europe and America”, wrote Tugendhat in the Financial Times newspaper. “In a downturn, the difference between state-backed credit and the buying power of normal commercial investors will become starker, further strengthening the hand of state-owned enterprises with a voracious appetite to buy rather than build.”

While Britain has prided itself on being an open economy with few restrictions on foreign ownership for decades, the basis for that model has been changed by the “rise in state capitalism with deep pockets”, wrote Tugendhat.

In April 2020, Tugendhat had said, Beijing was exploiting the global coronavirus crisis which emerged from its region by wresting control of companies such as Imagination Technologies and trying to change the way the internet works.

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