Ian Williams Ian Williams

Is Liz Truss going soft on China?

The PM seems to be toning down the rhetoric on Beijing

(Credit: Getty images)

In her speech to the Conservative party conference, Liz Truss rightly pointed out that we did not stand up to Russia early enough. ‘We became too dependent on authoritarian regimes for cheap goods and energy,’ she said. We can safely assume that those ‘other’ regimes include China, though curiously given how prominently the China threat figured in her leadership campaign, her speech contained no direct reference to Beijing.

To be fair, Truss had a lot on her mind, and it is early days in her administration. But there are a number of reasons to believe she is wobbling on her commitment to a more robust and coherent China policy. It’s time to ask whether her tough talk will soon be swept aside by the crisis facing her and the economy.

This week, a decision on the sale of Newport Wafer Fab, Britain’s largest chip-making facility, to a Chinese-owned company was delayed for a third time. The government launched a national security assessment of the sale in May in what was seen as a key test of new legislation on security and investment. It had seemed like a pretty cut and dried case. Also delayed was a decision on removing state-owned China General Nuclear from the UK’s nuclear energy programme, with the government struggling to find a way of filling the funding gap this could create.

Perhaps the most frightening photograph to emerge from Tory conference was shared on Instagram by Stanley Johnson

For his part, foreign secretary James Cleverly is sounding a good deal more conciliatory towards Beijing than his predecessor (one Liz Truss). In his first meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, during the UN general assembly last month, he reportedly took Yi to task over tensions in the Taiwan strait, but ‘set out the importance of constructive engagement with China,’ according to the Foreign Office take.

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