(Bloomberg) — Rishi Sunak will hold talks with Xi Jinping on Wednesday, becoming the first British prime minister to meet with the Chinese president in almost five years, after a last-minute diplomatic effort at the G-20 summit.
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In office for just three weeks, Sunak has softened the UK’s approach to China, backing away from his predecessor Liz Truss’s plan to label the Asian country a “threat” to Britain. The meeting with Xi in Bali, Indonesia will give him a chance to discuss how to work together on areas of common concern, while raising objections about Beijing’s human rights record.
“If we want to solve big global challenges like public health, like Russia and Ukraine, fixing the global economy or indeed climate change, it’s important to have a dialog and to engage with China as part of solving those challenges,” Sunak told Sky News. “Our approach to China is one that is very similar to our allies, whether that’s America, Australia and Canada.”
Sunak’s office requested the meeting with Xi, which will be the the first between leaders of the two countries since February 2018, when the Chinese president met with Britain’s then prime minister, Theresa May. May’s successor, Boris Johnson, spoke to Xi by telephone in March 2021.
Truss, who was only in office for seven weeks, had adopted a more hostile stance on China, seeking to designate it as a “threat,” compared with Johnson’s classification of the nation as a “systemic competitor.” Sunak’s foreign policy adviser, John Bew, is updating the Johnson-era integrated security, defense and foreign policy review from 2021 and is expected to report by the end of the year.
‘Drifting Into Appeasement’
After years of deteriorating ties over the involvement of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd in UK telecom networks, the treatment by China of Hong Kong dissidents and the Uighur Muslim minority, and China’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sunak appears keen to reset relations.
That risks angering some members of Sunak’s Conservative Party.
“I am worried that the present prime minister, when he meets Xi Jinping, will be perceived as weak because it now looks like we’re drifting into appeasement with China, which is a disaster as it was in the 1930s and so it will be now,” former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said in a statement. “They only understand strength and strength of purpose. Xi Jinping will see him as a weak leader and that’s how Xi Jinping behaves.”
Tory MP Bob Seely said that while the UK needs to talk to China, “we cannot normalize relations.”
But Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview that “we cannot simply cut off China: we must work to create the space for dialog, challenge and cooperation.”
UK’s Sunak Keeps Option of Sending Arms to Taiwan on the Table
And while the tone may have softened a little, Sunak did tell reporters this week he sees China as “a systemic challenge to our values and interests” as well as “the biggest state-based threat to our economic security.” He also kept the option of sending weapons to Taiwan on the table.
Sunak’s spokesman, Max Blain, said the premier would raise the issue of human rights with Xi. China denies any mistreatment of its citizens.
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