PM rolls out red carpet for the red dragon as tough rhetoric on China goes up in smoke
All-out attack on ‘our No1 threat’ has been replaced with talks as diplomacy moves centre stage in Bali
FOR anyone who wanted to know what Rishi Sunak’s approach to Beijing would be if he reached No10, the “Ready4 Rishi” email that dropped on the morning of July 25 left little doubt.
“China our #1 threat” shouted the subject line, with the full text of the Tory leadership campaign press release carrying on in much the same vein.
All of China’s 30 Uk-based Confucius Institutes, educational and cultural courses delivered through universities which are often seen as a Chinese soft power arm, would be closed down.
A “Nato-style” alliance of countries would be set up to counter “Chinese technological aggression”. MI5 would get a greater remit to support British businesses from IP theft and “key British assets” would be protected from Chinese takeover. If the tenor of the message was not obvious enough by the policies, a hard-hitting quotation from the candidate was included to hammer home the point: “China is the biggest long-term threat to Britain and the world’s economic and national security,” Mr Sunak warned.
He added: “Enough is enough. For too long, politicians in Britain and across the West have rolled out the red carpet and turned a blind eye to China’s nefarious activity and ambitions.”
The press release, using first name terms, declared: “Rishi is ready to face down China.” Scroll forward four months. Mr Sunak is in No10, albeit after Tory members went for his rival Liz Truss before she imploded. And the tough rhetoric has disappeared, replaced by a handshake.
Britain’s new Prime Minister will today become the first in almost half a decade to hold face-to-face talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a hastily arranged chat at the G20 summit in Bali. Gone is the language of all-out confrontation, replaced with a more sober declaration that it is vital for the UK to engage with nations such as China to solve problems, whatever differences exist. Mr Sunak has also declined to endorse his predecessor’s push to relabel China a “threat”, rather than simply a “systemic competitor”, in the UK’S formal foreign policy strategy documents.
So, has Mr Sunak had an overnight conversion? Has world leader pressure or behind the scenes arm-twisting played a part? Or is something subtler at play?
As often is the case in diplomacy, a more complex blend of personal instincts, the faded need to please the party base and the immediate geopolitical situation appear to be key factors.
First, what must be questioned is how deeply Mr Sunak ever believed the rhetoric he deployed on the campaign trail, which may have been the outlier rather than the norm.
As chancellor, Mr Sunak had actually shown signs of being on the more engaging end of the Tory spectrum when it came to the UK’S relationship with China.
Back in January, it emerged that Mr Sunak had ordered Treasury officials to revive the Uk-china Economic and Financial Dialogue, a major trade summit that had been on pause since 2019 after rising tensions over Hong Kong and Covid-19.
The hardline stance adopted during the campaign reflected what appeared to be the prevailing mood on the Tory bench. A wing of former Brexiteers, having won the Europe wars, have seized on pushing a more hawkish stance on China as a central political goal. Mr Sunak’s apparent softening of position was leapt on by Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, yesterday as he leant on the rhetoric of the Second World War build-up to warn that “appeasement” was now being pursued.
Sir Iain was one of a handful of Tory MPS sanctioned last year by Beijing after criticising its treatment of Uyghur Muslims. But other fellow China hawks have been brought inside the nest. Tom Tugendhat is now the security minister, attending Cabinet, while Nusrat Ghani is the science minister. They are unlikely to speak out against No10 from their government positions.
With Mr Sunak in power, he no longer needs to think about appealing to the Tory membership and his party’s hardline group has thinned, leaving him freer to act.
Then there is the departure of Ms Truss herself. Whitehall insiders who watched the transition closely from Boris Johnson to Ms Truss and then to Mr Sunak have no doubt she wanted the toughest approach to China of all three.
As foreign secretary, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Ms Truss had spelt out her critical view of Beijing, vowing to block Chinese involvement from UK critical national infrastructure – a broad outlook she carried over into No 10.
Most attention has fallen on how she wanted to rewrite the so-called “integrated review”, an attempt by Mr Johnson to bring together thinking on defence, foreign, security and development policy into a single, overarching framework in 2021.
In it, China was labelled “systemic competitor” in general, but also more specifically “the biggest state-based threat to the UK’S economic security”. Ms Truss was widely reported to have wanted to upgrade China to something closer to an overall “threat”, though the exact wording was never known.
It is telling that Mr Sunak, pushed by reporters on his flight to the G20 summit on whether he agreed, stuck closely to the wording in the current integrated review, rather than either Ms Truss’s more punchy vision or indeed his own rhetoric during the campaign trail.
And then there is the geopolitical situation. All Western nations are attempting to tread the line between engagement and condemnation with Beijing, trying to cajole it into joint cooperation on crucial world issues and stand up to its nefarious practices; at this moment, perhaps that seesaw has tipped a little towards the former choice.
Intelligence agencies have also become concerned by China’s seemingly emboldened approach in recent years. Greater Manchester Police investigated the assault of a Chinese activist protesting outside the Chinese Consulate in Manchester last month. The man,
at a peaceful protest, was dragged inside the consulate grounds and assaulted. In the past, the Chinese government would never have allowed officials to potentially embarrass the mother country by conducting such an attack in broad daylight. That doesn’t seem to be a worry anymore.
So what of Mr Sunak’s campaign pledges now?
The Confucius Institutes are not about to be closed down, it appears – though UK funding is being pulled. Nor has a “Nato-style” alliance to take on Beijing’s tech theft been announced even as an ambition.
In fact, engagement is the word of the day, with the new Prime Minister personally pushing for his meeting with Mr Xi, one that – unlike all his other bilateral meetings for the balmy Bali summit – was only locked down and announced yesterday.
Mr Sunak is not blind to the challenges, insists his team. The conversation will be “frank”, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said yesterday.
The relationship will be “clear-eyed”. Human rights issues – which, presumably, means the Uyghurs – will be raised.
But the tough-sounding China hawk that appeared during the summer Tory leadership campaign – if he ever existed beyond press releases and hustings sound bites – is long gone.
In his place is a more nuanced new Prime Minister, hoping talks not taunts can achieve the outcomes he and other world leaders desire, for now at least.