STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said China poses a “systemic” challenge to UK values and interests as his government condemned Beijing after a BBC jourmalist was beaten while covering protests in Shanghai.
The speech came as tensions were further strained between the two nations after Ed Lawrence, working in China as an accredited BBC journalist, was arrested at a COVID lockdown demonstration in Shanghai and detained for several hours. The UK public broadcaster says he was assaulted and kicked by police.
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 their people’s protests, the Chinese government has chosen to crack down further, including by assaulting a BBC journalist.”
In his first major foreign policy speech, Sunak said the so-called “golden era” of UK relations with China was “over, along with the naive idea that trade would automatically lead to social and political reform”.
As a result, the United Kingdom would “need to evolve our approach to China”, he said in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, adding that Beijing was “consciously competing for global influence using all the levers of state power”.
Sunak’s policy
Rishi Sunak government will prioritise deepening trade and security ties with Indo-Pacific allies, and adding that “economics and security are indivisible” in the region.
Rishi Sunak has promised to get tough on China if he secures the top job, calling the Asian superpower the “number one threat” to domestic and global security. He also promised to “kick the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] out of our universities” by forcing higher education establishments to disclose foreign funding of more than 50,000 pounds ($60,000) and reviewing research partnerships.
He would also study the case for banning Chinese acquisitions of key British assets, including strategically sensitive tech firms. Sunak claimed China was “stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities” and “propping up” Russian President Vladimir Putin by buying Russian oil, as well as attempting to bully neighbours, including Taiwan. He hit out at China’s global “belt and road” scheme for “saddling developing countries with insurmountable debt”.
With the end of all lockdown restrictions earlier this year, however, Sunak changed his approach for rapidly reducing government debt – via higher taxes, costing him sympathy while people grapple with a record rise in the cost of living.
Sunak significant increases in corporation tax and national insurance were attacked from across the political spectrum for damaging business, and because national insurance is a tax on workers, so it falls disproportionately on younger people. However, tightening government spending is in line with Sunak’s political views.
Sunak is pro-Brexit and anti-immigration. Sunak describes himself as a ‘fiscal Conservative’ advocating for a small state and low taxes. However, many political pundits in British said clearly, he is a pragmatist as well. However, the Conservative Party is a “strange beast these days”, with the right wing not being too fond of him.
Sunak’s proposals include the closure of all 30 Confucius Institutes in Britain, preventing the soft-power spread of Chinese influence through culture and language programmes. Last week London banned Chinese-made security cameras from sensitive government buildings. China’s state-run Global Times has previously said Sunak was the only candidate in the contest with “a clear and pragmatic view on developing UK-China ties”.
Sunak has previously promised to close all Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese culture and language but are partially funded by the Chinese government, and said he would lead an international alliance against Chinese cyberthreats, and help British companies and universities counter Chinese spying.
“We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism,” he said.
“Of course, we cannot simply ignore China’s significance in world affairs — to global economic stability or issues like climate change. The US, Canada, Australia, Japan and many others understand this too.”
Sunak’s profile
Some in Sunak’s Conservative Party have been critical of the prime minister, regarding him as less hawkish on China than his predecessor Liz Truss.
Lawmaker Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader and a vocal Beijing critic who co-chairs the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said Sunak’s “robust pragmatism” meant “anything you want it to mean” and amounted to “appeasement.”
David Lammy, the opposition Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesman, meanwhile, described Sunak’s speech as “as thin as gruel.”
Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 would be used to help combat Chinese espionage, and he would look to build “NATO-style” international cooperation to tackle Chinese threats in cyberspace. In March last year, its integrated review of security, defence and foreign policy called China “the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security”. Under fierce political pressure from Washington, it banned Chinese technology giant Huawei from involvement in the rollout of Britain’s 5G network. Laws have been tightened to make it harder for foreign firms to buy British businesses in sensitive sectors such as defence, energy and transport.
Many Tories see Sunak as a traitor, whom he only ousted by resigning from Johnson. A document was even circulating in Tory WhatsApp groups, the “Dirty Dossier”, which portrays Sunak as aloof and sneaky.
The Impact of British PM statement
The current relationship between China and British have bowled and both of countries have launched their critics each others. Politically, China’s government can predict they are not happy with Rishi Sunak’s statement and condemn against China related to “Zero Covid” riots in Shanghai and previously China was saw that British also try to intervere at “the political business China in Taiwan and Hong Kong” two regions are complained by China as their legally territory.
After his statement and his promise, Rishi Sunak can predict he is going to change his government foreign, military, culture and including economic to China and because of that China will respond it. Probably, if highly tensions between China and British does not harmonize handle, in many days later we are going to see the possibility of economic, culture and diplomatic war between China against British.
