Sir Iain was one of a handful of Tory MPs to be sanctioned by Beijing last year after criticizing his treatment of Uyghur Muslims. But other China hawks have been brought into the nest. Tom Tugendhat is now the Minister of Security, attending the Cabinet, while Nusrat Ghani is the Minister of Science. They cannot speak against Number 10 from their government positions. Now that Mr Sunak is in power, he no longer has to think about appealing to Tory members and his party’s hard-line group has thinned out, leaving him freer to act. Then follows the departure of Mrs. Tras herself. Whitehall insiders who closely followed the transition from Boris Johnson to Mrs Truss and then Mr Sunak have no doubt that he wanted the toughest approach to China of the three. As foreign secretary, in an interview with The Telegraph, Ms Truss had expressed her critical view of Beijing, pledging to block Chinese interference from critical UK national infrastructure – a broad perspective she carried over to Number 10. Most attention has fallen on how he wanted to rewrite the so-called “comprehensive review”, an attempt by Mr Johnson to bring thinking on defence, foreign security and development policy into a single, overarching framework in 2021. In it China was described as a “systemic competitor” in general, but also more specifically “the biggest state threat to the UK’s economic security”. Ms Truss was widely reported as wanting to upgrade China to something closer to a global “threat”, although the exact wording was never made known. Tellingly, Mr. Sunak, who was pressed by reporters on his flight to the G20 summit on whether he agreed, stuck to the wording found in the current comprehensive review, rather than either Ms. Truss either in his own rhetoric during the campaign trail.
The influence of China’s Kremlin was still felt
And then there is the geopolitical situation. All Western nations are trying to walk the line between engagement and condemnation with Beijing, trying to both stand up to its harmful practices and urge it to work together on critical global issues. Right now, maybe that seesaw is tipped a little towards the former option. With a land war raging again in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s influence in the Kremlin has not gone unnoticed by leaders seeking to end the conflict. It is worth noting that in the reading after Joe Biden, the US President, and Mr. Xi’s first meeting in Bali, there was a general agreement that nuclear wars cannot be won and should never be fought. It was a restatement of existing Chinese policy, but given Washington fears that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine – it was always going to be read as a warning from the Kremlin.
