Dan Sabbagh – The Guardian Oct 12, 2022
China is to be formally designated a “threat” to Britain in a hasty rewrite of Boris Johnson’s defence and foreign policy that is being brought forward to end confusion among ministers about how to deal with Beijing.
Under Johnson, China had been categorised as a “systemic competitor” but the new prime minister, Liz Truss, wants to take a more hawkish stance quickly, as she seeks to shore up support for her faltering premiership on her backbenches.
The redesignation will bring the UK’s official position towards China close to its stance on Russia, currently classed as “the most acute threat” facing the UK. But it is almost certain to provoke a hostile reaction from Beijing.
It had been intended to complete the policy rewrite at the end of the year, but sources said a special China strategy review was now being brought forward after the Department for Education was forced into a climbdown by No 10 over the weekend after expressing support for China’s Confucius Institutes. One insider said the change could come “within days”.
Influential Conservative backbenchers on Tuesday night welcomed the anticipated move. Iain Duncan Smith, who is campaigning to be chair of the foreign affairs select committee, said a hardening of the UK’s China policy was long overdue.
“It is time we stopped messing around and recognised that China poses a threat to the way we live our lives, and it is time now to treat them in the same way we treat Russia,” the former party leader said.
The DfE had issued a statement expressing support for China’s 30 Confucius Institutes, which promote the teaching of Chinese language and culture in the UK – only for Downing St to demand it made a firmer response.
The revised statement said the “UK government is committed to doing more to adapt to China’s growing impact” and encouraged anybody with concerns about any of the Confucius Institute’s activities to report them.
A report by the Henry Jackson Society thinktank had concluded most of the institutes were engaged in activities beyond their formal remit, including political lobbying and expanding China’s reach into advanced manufacturing.
Truss has adopted a hawkish stance on China for some time – at one point leading opposition within the cabinet to TikTok moving its global headquarters to London – but her predecessor in Downing St was insistent on a more nuanced approach.
In a private meeting Johnson once described himself as “fervently Sinophile”, a position out of kilter with many on the Conservative benches, who have been lobbying for a tougher approach for the fast few years.
Britain’s stance towards China has swung dramatically in less than a decade, from the “golden era” proclaimed by David Cameron in 2015, the year in which its president, Xi Jinping, was granted a state visit to the UK. Beijing signalled it was keen to invest in strategic industries in Britain, such as nuclear power.
Tobias Ellwood what a complete and utter twat he said a few weeks ago Britain has to build more ships and tanks lol the muppet doesn’t realise morons like him have destroyed our manufacturing industries. Rotten fruits always fall from trees
> Beijing signalled it was keen to invest in strategic industries in Britain, such as nuclear power
Ever wondered why your power bill is so high?
Ever wondered why your entire life is controlled by foreigners?
pus is just yet another unelected prime tosser who’ll do what the 400 unelected and mostly foreign “lords” tell it to.
I’ve not read, as it’s the Guardian.
But let’s consider what thicko Truss has done, and keep in mind that China was never going to give bankrupt Britain a trade deal. Even when we were in the EU, the UK was a trading failure, and mostly by elite design.
The City Crime Cartels, don’t make good margins by having the UK manufacture and trade with the world. This has been the case since WW2, that British car workers were still using 19th century tools in the 70s and 80s, by which time it was too late.
Because the City Crime Cartels were deregulated by Thatcher, China can pick and choose what financial products and services they want to use, now, China doesn’t even need the City, and this is why the corrupt UK elites are now hating on 1.4 billion Chinese sheeple, just as they’ve been hating the Russian sheeple for over 20 years.
Surely Truss and her handlers are in breech of numerous UK and international laws.
The little Englander Imperialist sicko mentality at work.
an appendix of asia still thinks it
could rule the world like 19th
century . britain forget about ,
times never come back !
your jewish background rulers already
have made agreement with china to
sacrifice the west .
> The revised statement said the “UK government is committed to doing more to adapt to China’s growing impact”
Too late for that.
> and encouraged anybody with concerns about any of the Confucius Institute’s activities to report them.
And where do I report my concerns about the jews running britain?
Get a load of this bloviation, “’It is time we stopped messing around and recognised that China poses a threat to the way we live our lives, and it is time now to treat them in the same way we treat Russia,’ the former party leader [Iain Duncan Smith] said.”
Let me fix it for that grotesque bag of treachery. “It is time we stopped messing around and recognised that the criminal cartel posing as our government, the overly avaricious criminal parasites in The City, a controlled relentlessly lying media, and the treachery and subversion of organized Jewry poses a threat to the way we live out lives.” There ya go.
As for Truss, I don’t think that syphilitic dumb-f*ck could even find China on a labeled map, so the threat she should be concerned about is all the mongrel degenerates and nigger agents of degradation and destruction that have invaded the country and have been actively sodomzing the septic isles with their special brands of inverted enrichment.
Well l should imagine designating someone who owns half your country and infrastructure a ‘threat’…
and that carries more than half the so called Uk Business bureaucracies and so called barons of industry (what’s left) in its silk pocket isn’t churlish or suicidal…
lt is simply horseshit.. the ‘city’ and its golem china are siamese twins… so if that doesn’t wake you up to what’s going down (my man)…
you are probably beyond help…
…and china has designated the uk as “mostly harmless”.
I’m sure the Chinese are xxxxxxx themselves silly about the UK getting tough with them. They could stroll down Downing Street and smash her back door in and she still wouldn’t have a clue who did it.
Britain – always the Americans favourite puppet. British agents have been trying to stir up trouble in China for years – especially in Hong Kong (that failed – notice how the British press never mentions it now?). Arms, money and propaganda have been funnelled to Islamic troublemakers, but the Chinese are on to that too.