Liz Truss’ trip to Taiwan this week is a “dangerous political stunt”, the Chinese embassy in London has said, as the former prime minister prepares to ask Rishi Sunak to declare Beijing a “threat” to the country’s security United Kingdom.
He is expected to use a speech in Taipei City on Wednesday to challenge the prime minister on his rhetoric during last summer’s Conservative party leadership contest, when he declared China “the biggest long-term threat for Great Britain.” He also promised to close the UK’s 30 Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese culture on campus in higher education and in some British schools.
In a preview extract of his speech to the Prospect Foundation, Truss is expected to say: “Last summer, the now British Prime Minister described China as ‘the biggest long-term threat to Britain’, and he said Confucius Institutes should be closed.. He was right and we need to see these policies enacted urgently.
“The UK’s integrated review must be amended to clearly state that China is a threat. Confucius institutes should be closed immediately. Instead, the service could be provided by citizen-supported organizations from Hong Kong and Taiwanese who have come to the UK, for free.”
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in London said Truss’ visit to Taiwan was a “dangerous political spectacle that will do nothing but harm the UK”. The statement on the embassy’s website added: “We urge the relevant British politician to correct his misconduct, stop making political spectacles with the Taiwan issue and stop conniving and supporting secessionist forces of ‘independence’ from Taiwan'”.
Truss is the most senior British politician to visit the country since Margaret Thatcher in the 1990s, and arrives at a time when relations between Britain and China are at their most contentious in decades.
The former Conservative leader is also expected to urge the West not to work with China, warning that totalitarian regimes “don’t tell the truth”.
“There are still too many in the West who try to cling to the idea that we can cooperate with China on issues like climate change, as if there is nothing wrong with it; that there are bigger issues than Chinese global dominance or the future of freedom and democracy,” he is expected to say. “But without freedom and democracy there is nothing else.”
Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war ended the Communist Party’s control of the mainland. The island has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, but Beijing has insisted it must be united with the mainland, by force if necessary.
A UK government spokesman said it was in the UK’s interests to “continue engagement” with China while acknowledging the challenges the country presents, adding: “We have always been clear that China remains the biggest state threat to UK economic security.
“That’s why our integrated review update sets out a new approach to tackling the challenge that China presents to the UK and the wider world.”
