The Chinese embassy in Britain in a statement on Sunday asked London to stop slandering and smearing China to avoid further damage to China-UK relations.

This comes after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said China represents the world's greatest challenge to security and prosperity but that other leading economies should not decouple from it after a summit of the Group of Seven (G7) nations.

"The relevant remarks by the British side are simply parroting words from others and constitute malicious slanders in disregard of the facts. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this," the embassy statement said.