China Poses Systemic Challenge to UK

On the plane to Bali, Rishi Sunak was asked whether he would commit, like his predecessor Liz Truss, to recategorising China as a “threat” to national security.

During the leadership campaign Liz Truss had pledged to reopen the integrated review, published last year, which lays out the UK’s priorities in diplomacy and defence.

Sunak said he believed China posed a “systemic challenge” to the UK’s values but he did not say he would stick with Truss’ commitment to officially reclassify China in the integrated review.

“My view on China is straightforward. I think that China unequivocally poses a systemic threat – well, a systemic challenge – to our values and our interests and is undoubtedly the biggest state-based threat to our economic security… that’s how I think about China,” he said.

That’s why it’s important that we take the powers that we need to defend ourselves against that. For example the National Security Investment Act is a good example of that.

“But I also think that China is an indisputable fact of the global economy and we’re not going to be able to resolve shared global challenges like climate change, or public health, or indeed actually dealing with Russia and Ukraine, without having a dialogue with them.”

The Prime Minister was also asked whether he thought the UK should send arms to Taiwan.

He said: “We’re looking at all of these policies as part of our refresh of the integrated review. Our policy on Taiwan is obviously there should be no unilateral change to the status and there should be a peaceful resolution to that situation. We stand ready to support Taiwan as we do in standing up to Chinese aggression.”

BBC /Shakirat Sadiq