Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
Does China know something about Prince Andrew that the rest of the UK doesn't? If reports about ‘H6’, the alleged Chinese spy who befriended the prince, are accurate, they suggest Beijing's United Front Work Department may have had an inflated sense of disgraced royalty's ability to influence UK policy.
Andrew's ties to H6 seem to have begun in earnest after the prince stood down in 2011 as a UK trade envoy on account of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile.
From that point Andrew's potential as a conduit to power in London, never great, was close to nil.
Yet even in 2020 his aide had the chutzpah to tell H6 that in terms of closeness to the prince he (H6) sat “at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on”.
Andrew says he long since cut ties to H6, who is likely to be named this week.
