Kong Linlin was due to appear before magistrates over alleged incident at Tory conference

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A case has been dropped against a Chinese state journalist charged with common assault after she allegedly slapped a delegate at this year’s Conservative party conference.

Kong Linlin had been due to appear before Birmingham magistrates on Wednesday to answer the charge. But the case was discontinued on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service.

A CPS spokeswoman said: “This case was originally charged by the police. The CPS subsequently reviewed the available evidence and determined it was insufficient to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and therefore discontinued the case.”

Last month West Midlands police confirmed that Kong, a journalist with the state broadcaster CCTV, had been charged over the incident at a fringe event at the conference on 30 September.

She allegedly slapped Tory party member Enoch Lieu when he asked her to leave an event on the “erosion of freedom” of Hong Kong under Chinese rule. She had been heckling speakers who had criticised China’s handling of Hong Kong.

Video of the incident appeared to show Lieu gently pushing Kong away as she heckled a speaker at the event. “Leave me alone,” she told Lieu before appearing to slap him, the video showed. “You have no right, I am a journalist,” she was heard to say.

The incident threatened to escalate into a diplomatic spat after the Chinese embassy in London intervened. It initially said the organisers of the event, Hong Kong Watch and the Conservative party’s human rights commission, should apologise to Kong. Later it criticised the decision of the police to charge Linlin as “both shocking and confusing”.

In a statement it said: “The British judicial authorities are urged to handle this case fairly and do justice to the journalist. We urge the UK side to take effective measures to protect the legitimate rights of Chinese journalists in the UK to their job.”

The embassy has yet to comment on the decision to discontinue the case. Lieu has also been contacted for comment.