Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are battling in an increasingly contentious Conservative Party leadership race.
Rishi Sunak, the former UK chancellor who is in the running to become prime minister, has vowed to crack down on China if he lands the top job, calling the Asian superpower a ‘number one security threat’ national and global.
Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who will take part in a televised debate on Monday evening, are taking part in the increasingly contentious Conservative Party leadership race to replace Boris Johnson, after a revolt against his embattled administration scandals forced him to retire.
Johnson is expected to leave the premiership later this year.
Truss is leading in polls among Conservative Party members who will choose their new leader and the next British prime minister, but Sunak hopes weeks of jostling and debate will help his campaign ahead of the outcome of the vote scheduled for September 5.
Sunak’s engagement on China on Monday came after Truss accused him of being weak on Beijing and Moscow.
China’s state-run Global Times previously said Sunak was the only contestant with “a clear and pragmatic view of the development of UK-China relations”.
Sunak’s proposals include closing the 30 Confucius Institutes in Britain, preventing the spread of the soft power of Chinese influence through cultural and linguistic programs.
He also promised to “kick the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] out of our universities” by requiring higher education institutions to disclose foreign funding of more than £50,000 ($60,000) and reviewing research partnerships.
“Stealing our technology”
Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 would be used to help combat Chinese espionage, and it would seek to establish “NATO-style” international cooperation to counter Chinese threats in cyberspace.
He would also study the case for banning Chinese acquisitions of key British assets, including strategically sensitive tech companies.
Sunak claimed that China was “stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities” and “supporting” Russian President Vladimir Putin by buying Russian oil, as well as trying to intimidate its neighbors, including Taiwan.
He denounced China’s global “belt and road” program to “impose an insurmountable debt on developing countries”.
“They torture, detain and indoctrinate their own people, including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, in violation of their human rights. And they have continuously rigged the global economy in their favor by suppressing their currency,” he added.
“Enough is enough. For too long politicians in Britain and the West have rolled out the red carpet and turned a blind eye to China’s nefarious activities and ambitions.
“I will change that on Day 1 as PM.”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Truss’s campaign said the Foreign Secretary had ‘strengthened Britain’s position on China’ and ‘helped lead the international response to rising Chinese aggression”.
“This will only continue when she becomes prime minister and seeks to expand her network of freedom around the world,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
talk tough
Sunak’s tough talk is likely to appeal to Chinese hawks in the conservative ranks, who had repeatedly pushed Johnson to stand up more against Beijing, but it’s also a sign of how desperately Sunak is trying to claw back ground on Truss.
British government policy, when Sunak and Truss were in Johnson’s cabinet, has already warned against China.
In March last year, its Integrated Review of Security, Defense and Foreign Policy called China “the greatest state threat to the UK’s economic security”.
Under fierce political pressure from Washington, he banned Chinese tech giant Huawei from getting involved in rolling out Britain’s 5G network.
Laws have been tightened to make it harder for foreign companies to buy British companies in sensitive sectors such as defence, energy and transport.