Politicians around the world trying to address ‘China threat’
LONDON — It’s not just the economy. While inflation and recession fears weigh heavily on the minds of voters, another issue is popping up in political campaigns from the U.K. and Australia to the U.S. and beyond: the “China threat.”
The two finalists vying to become Britain’s next prime minister, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, clashed in a televised debate last month over who would be toughest on China.
It’s a stark departure from outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s business-focused “Sinophile” approach and part of a hardening of anti-China rhetoric in many Western countries and other democracies, like Japan, that is coming out in election campaigns.
Nations for years have sought to balance promoting trade and investment with the world’s second-largest economy with concerns about China’s projection of military power, espionage and its human rights record.
The pendulum is swinging toward the latter, as evidenced in U.S., European, Japanese and Australian opposition to the threatening Chinese military drills that followed U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week and growing warnings from Western intelligence agencies about Beijing’s snooping and interference.
A delegation of U.S. lawmakers arrived Sunday in Taiwan to discuss reducing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and investments in semiconductors, among other topics.
That shift has made China a target for vote-seeking politicians as opinion polls show public sentiment in many democracies turning against China. Some candidates blame China for economic woes at home in addition to posing a security threat to its neighbors and the wider world.
China loomed large in Australia’s election in May in which the conservatives, who ultimately lost, tried to paint the opposition as being unwilling to stand up to Beijing.
America’s growing rival on the global stage is also expected to figure in this fall’s U.S. congressional races, particularly in Midwest industrial states, long after former President Donald Trump embraced a fierce antiChina posture.
Many in Europe are also rebalancing their approach to China, though that did not figure significantly in elections in France this year and in Germany in 2021.
Andreas Fulda, a University of Nottingham political scientist specializing in China, said British politicians “are more clear-eyed about China” than their European neighbors.
“The U.K. has paid close attention to what’s happening in Australia, and in many ways, the debate here is well ahead of mainland Europe,” he said.
Truss, the British foreign secretary and the front-runner in the Conservative Party’s leadership race, has spoken of expanding what she calls a “network of liberty” so democracies can counter China and Russia more effectively. She says she will crack down on Chinese tech companies such as the owner of TikTok, the short-video platform.
In her role as Britain’s top diplomat, Truss has strongly criticized China’s military moves after Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, accusing Beijing of an “aggressive and wide-ranging escalation” that “threaten[s] peace and stability in the region.”
Sunak, Britain’s former Treasury chief, has pledged to shutter the partially Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes that promote Chinese culture and language at U.K. universities, lead an international alliance against Chinese cyberthreats, and help British companies and universities counter Chinese spying.
“I had a sense of déjà vu having just moved over from Australia,” said Ben Bland, director of the Asia-Pacific program at London’s Chatham House think tank, who previously worked at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. “There’s a similar atmosphere with some politicians trying to deploy the China threat as a domestic political tool.”
Bland described a dramatic shift in how politicians talk about China in both the U.K. and Australia, from a focus on trade and business ties five years ago to viewing China “through the prism of a threat to national security and economic competitiveness.”