China poses the biggest challenge to global security and prosperity of our age with the “means and intent to reshape the world order”, Rishi Sunak has said. The UK prime minister said G7 leaders including Japan, the US, Canada and European nations had shown “unity and resolve” in confronting the problems posed by Beijing. The statement from the G7 nations referred to “de-risking” rather than “de-coupling” from their relationship with China amid warnings from France that the summit should not be seen as being anti-Beijing. However, Sunak went further than…
Tag: Foreign policy
Sunak to urge G7 support for collective action against ‘economic coercion’
The UK and other G7 countries are planning collective action against Russia and China if they threaten trade boycotts for political reasons, announcing a new body to deal with “economic coercion”. Rishi Sunak will urge “bold and pragmatic collective action” against hostile states that stop trading with other countries when they disagree with their geopolitical decisions. He will cite Russia’s stranglehold on European gas supplies last year as a situation that could have been met with a collective response. Other examples include China’s punitive tariffs on Australian wine after Canberra…
China aims to subordinate the west, claims US politician on UK visit
Beijing wants to “subordinate and humiliate” the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress, who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK. Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in “the inevitable demise of capitalism”, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee’s concerns. The goal of Beijing, Gallagher argued, was “to render us subordinate, humiliated and irrelevant on the world stage and…
US China hawks to press UK minister for tougher line on Beijing
A Republican-led group of China hawks from the US Congress will visit Westminster on Friday where they are expected to meet the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, for lunch and press for the UK to take a tougher line on Beijing. The 11-strong delegation is led by the Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, who chairs a high-profile, newly created China committee. Some fear a strident anti-Beijing tone will alienate centrist and left-leaning politicians in the UK. Gallagher has called for a total ban on the Chinese-owned app TikTok, and argued in the…
Rishi Sunak seeks to build stronger defence with Japan at Tokyo G7
Rishi Sunak will seek to build a stronger defence with Japan amid fears of China’s rising militarisation as he travels to Tokyo and Hiroshima for the G7 summit. The prime minister will be accompanied by his wife, Akshata Murty, on their first official visit since he entered No 10 for the meeting of leaders from the US, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Italy and the EU. Sunak is expected to unveil the Hiroshima accord, an agreement with Japan aimed at stepping up defence cooperation and improving supply chains, when he meets…
Putin was indicted by the ICC … so why not the butcher of Damascus? | Simon Tisdall
The grotesque rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad’s regime – Syria’s criminal president has been cordially invited to this week’s Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia – makes sense to cynical Arab governments. They hope to reduce Damascus’s dependence on Iran, encourage refugees to return, halt state-sponsored drug rackets and cash in on reconstruction. But from a human perspective, their decision is utterly shameful. More than 300,000 civilians have died since Assad turned his guns on Syria’s 2011 Arab spring pro-democracy uprising. About 14 million people, half Syria’s population, have fled their…
The Observer view on Liz Truss’s intervention in Taiwan | Observer editorial
To Liz Truss’s many failings must now be added an apparent prejudice against Rutland. Not unlike the island of Taiwan, England’s smallest historic county has fought hard over the years to maintain its independence from a larger, overbearing neighbour. For China, read Leicestershire. Now its Conservative MP, Alicia Kearns, has become the target of a nasty geopolitical sneer. If you hail from landlocked rural Rutland, Truss’s spokesperson superciliously implied last week, you probably don’t understand international affairs. This insulting inference was made after Kearns had the temerity to question the…
UK MPs urge minister to do more to free Hongkongers’ trapped savings
The first British ministerial visit to Hong Kong since the introduction of draconian Chinese security laws five years ago was a chance to demand that China unlock more than £2bn in pensions belonging to British overseas passport holders who fled for the UK, former cabinet ministers have told the Foreign Office. A letter signed by more than 90 MPs, including 10 former ministers, urges the trade minister Dominic Johnson to do more to release frozen savings belonging to thousands of Hongkongers. Lord Johnson’s three-day visit to Hong Kong heavily focused…
Liz Truss to visit Taiwan and give speech that could upset UK’s China strategy
The former prime minister Liz Truss is to visit Taiwan next week, where she will deliver a speech likely to anger Beijing and potentially upset the UK government’s careful approach to China relations. Truss said on Tuesday: “Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I’m looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing.” The former Conservative leader’s office said on Tuesday that she was also expected to meet senior members of the…
Canada expels Chinese diplomat for alleged intimidation of lawmaker
Canada has expelled a Chinese diplomat after an intelligence report accused him of trying to intimidate a Canadian lawmaker critical of China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority. “Canada has decided to declare persona non grata Mr Zhao Wei,” the Canadian foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, said in a statement on Monday. “The decision has been taken after careful consideration of all factors at play.” The rare decision to remove an accredited diplomat comes only days after Joly’s office summoned the Chinese ambassador, Cong Peiwu, to express frustration over attempts to…