The warning comes from Professor Adrian Pabst, Deputy Director for Social and Political Economy for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, who told Express.co.uk that UK sanctions on China would see Beijing's retaliation causing a huge hit to the UK economy. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said his administration would look into putting sanctions on a list of 11 Chinese companies.


Commenting on the consequences of the move on the UK and on Britain's potential intention to follow suit, Professor Pabst said: "We know that whenever there are US sanctions against countries or companies, there are some ripple effects because the US sanctions tend to not just affect individual countries say, like Iran in the past or Russia, or indeed companies, but also affecting all businesses that want to do any kind of business with those companies.

"So it can have quite a ripple effect. And so all will depend on exactly which companies the US chooses to put on the sanctions.

"The UK has traditionally not gone for, as extensive measures as the US.

"For instance, on Russia sanctions, the UK has tended to side with the EU on Russia sanctions, which would be more limited in scope than US sanctions against Russia.

"The same may be true in this case, where the UK might find itself actually more closely aligned with EU partners because it still wants to do some business with China or certain Chinese company.

"So again, much will depend on the politics and the political response to this but certainly sanctions will have an effect.

"And if, again, in relation to sanctions or in response to sanctions, China decides to retaliate, perhaps much more than it has done so far on the Huawei decision in the UK, then, you know, the predictions will be that things will get worse and that the economy will take a greater hit.

"But as I said, it's really difficult to simulate something where you don't know what the political response will be in real time.

"That's always going to be a limit of economic models, so we can't really, we can't really overcome."

On Thursday, China's ambassador to the UK has warned against allowing "Cold War warriors" to damage relations between Beijing and Britain.