The Japanese embassy in London has been paying £10,000 (US$12,500) per month to a British think tank to push anti-China campaign, the Times reported.

The Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a registered charity founded in 2005, has received money from the Japanese embassy in London for months. In return, the HJS campaigns against the growing co-operation between China and Britain, according to the Times’ report published on January 29th, 2017.

HJS is said to encourage politicians and journalists to speak against Chinese foreign policy in British media, including former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind.

Last weekend, Rifkind acknowledged to the Times that the HJS had approached him to put his name to an article, headlined “How China could switch off Britain’s lights in a crisis if we let them build Hinkley C,” which questioned China’s involvement in Britain’s new nuclear plant.

The opinion piece, published last August by the Daily Telegraph, raised fear that “no one knows what ‘backdoor’ technologies might be able to be introduced into the building of a power plant.”

Rifkind told the Times that he didn’t know about the HJS’ deal with the Japanese embassy, and said that the HJS “ought to have informed me of that relationship when they asked me to support the article they provided.”

The Times’ investigation revealed that the financial relationship between the HJS and the Japanese embassy began last year, and would be up for renewal in April.