It was intended as a decisive, forthright answer. One designed to lay to rest any fears that Rishi Sunak was somehow soft on China while eliding the shift in stance from his ill-fated predecessor. Instead, Mr Sunak botched the answer. Asked, while flying to Bali for the G20 summit if he intended to label Beijing a "systemic threat", as the ultra-hawkish Liz Truss had planned to, the Prime Minister responded: "My view on China is straightforward. I think that China unequivocally poses a systemic threat – well, a systemic challenge – to our values, and our interests, and is undoubtedly the biggest state-based threat to our economic security, let me put it that way. That's how I think about China." That response – using the term threat, taking it back, before using it again – left China hawks in the Conservative Party, already despondent at Mr Sunak's apparent change in direction, bemused. "I just don't understand what he's doing," one veteran Tory MP and China sceptic told The Telegraph. "He thought he could curry favour with President Xi and get a meeting with him. Well that turned out to be a complete joke. " He's not alone. Within Government, too,… Read full this story
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