British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared on Monday that the “golden era” of Britain’s ties with China had ended in his first major foreign policy speech, describing China’s growing authoritarianism as a “systemic challenge to our values and interests.
But Sunak stopped short of calling China a threat, disappointing China hawks in his Conservative Party who until recently expected him to classify China as a “threat” to UK security as part of a foreign policy update. and government defense. In his address to the Lord Mayor’s annual banquet in London, Sunak said the UK would take on global competitors such as China “not with grand rhetoric, but with solid pragmatism” and boosting its ties with like-minded global allies, including the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
“We recognize that China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that becomes more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism,” he said. Referring to Beijing’s handling of widespread protests across China against the country’s strict “zero COVID” strategy, Sunak said that “instead of listening to the protests of its people, the Chinese government has chosen to take more forceful action, including assaulting a BBC journalist”.
In July, during a conservative leadership race to choose a successor To former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sunak said China posed the “greatest threat” to Britain and the security and prosperity of the world. At the time, he vowed to shut down all Confucius Institutes, the organizations partly funded by the Chinese government that promote Chinese culture and language at UK universities. He also said he would lead an international alliance against Chinese cyber threats and help British companies and universities counter Chinese espionage.
Lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader and China critic, said Sunak’s “robust pragmatism” meant “anything you want it to mean” and amounted to “appeasement”. And David Lammy, the foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Labor Party, described Sunak’s speech as “as thin as porridge”. “All it shows is that once again the Conservative government is changing its rhetoric on China,” Lammy said.
