Audit of UK relations with China delayed until after Reeves Visit

A review of UK-China relations has been delayed until after the chancellor makes her first trip to Beijing next month, the Guardian has learned, amid a row over an alleged spy who befriended Prince Andrew.

- Eleni Courea Jessica Elgot Amy Hawkins

Rachel Reeves will travel to China in early January as part of a charm offensive by the Labour government. The trip will be focused on financial services, and Tulip Siddiq, the city minister, is expected to travel with the chancellor.

This will raise concerns among China hawks that ministers may reject pressure to subject business dealings with China to higher scrutiny. Such pressure intensified after the exclusion of Yang Tengbo, a businessman who ran the Duke of York's Pitch@Palace project in China and is said by security officials to be associated with an arm of the Chinese state. On Monday, Yang asked a court to lift an anonymity order so he could challenge "ill-founded" claims against him and he insisted he was not a spy.

As part of a manifesto commitment, the government is carrying out a Whitehall audit of UK relations with China, which it had planned to publish at the same time as Reeves's trip. However, it has now been pushed back to the spring, a Foreign Office source confirmed. Only part of its findings will be published.

Ministers are under pressure to declare China a threat to national security by including it in the "enhanced" tier of a new scheme to register foreign lobbyists. But banks and other financial services firms are concerned about the implications this would have on their operations.