Truss to Designate China Threat to UK ‘Within Days’ - Report

The ensuing re-designation from a “systemic competitor” to a “threat” means that No 10’s official position on China will be close to its stance on Russia, which is currently classed as “the most acute threat” to Britain.

In a sign of worsening bilateral relations, UK Prime Minister Liz Truss is for the first time due to officially declare China a “threat” to the UK “within days,” The Telegraph has cited unnamed sources as saying.

The sources added that the designation would be a formal update to former PM Boris Johnson’s Integrated Review of Defense and Foreign Policy published in March 2021, in which China was classed as a “systemic competitor.”

Downing Street in turn said in a statement that Truss launched the update to the Integrated Review partly in response to what No 10 described as an increasingly aggressive China.

“As she [the British PM] has said, Russia remains the biggest threat to the UK but China represents the most serious long-term threat to our values and way of life,” the statement pointed out.

This comes after Jeremy Fleming, the head of the spy agency GCHQ, claimed that China’s push to develop surveillance capabilities in emerging technologies such as satellite location systems and digital currencies represent “a threat to us all.”

Fleming argued that China could be using its own version of GPS to “control and surveil” people in 120 countries around the world, also asserting that the BeiDou satellite navigation system could give China an advantage over the West in future conflicts.

U-Turn in China-UK Ties

Reports about Truss’ upcoming re-designation of China indicate how Britain’s position on China has changed significantly in less than a decade.

Back in 2015, then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron said ahead of a state visit to London by Chinese President Xi Jinping that bilateral trade and investment can benefit further from a “golden era” in their relationship.

“It’s going to be a very important moment for British-Chinese relations, which are in a very good state. The change we will see is obviously the investment into our infrastructure, Chinese companies employing people and creating jobs. But I think it’s also a big win for China as well, having access to a country that is a leading member of the EU and has so many other contacts and roles in the world,” Cameron told China Central Television at the time.

He echoed remarks by China’s then-ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming, who argued that Xi’s visit to the UK would mark the dawn of a “golden time” in bilateral ties.

Subsequent years, however, saw the two countries start to bicker over issues including the Chinese tech giant Huawei, Hong Kong and alleged human rights abuses against China's Uighur ethnic group.

In July 2020, growing pressure from the US and Tory MPs forced then-PM Johnson to order the removal of all Huawei kit from his country’s 5G networks by 2027 amid concerns that the Chinese government could use the company to spy on foreign countries, something that the firm has repeatedly rejected.

Separately, No 10 is uneasy over a national security being enacted in Hong Kong, a former UK colony, in late June 2020. Beijing and the Hong Kong government argue that the new law only serves the purpose of safeguarding China's national security, while respecting people’s liberties as well as the city’s special status. A whole array of Western countries, however, view the document as something that purportedly undermines Hong Kong’s autonomy, which China pledged under the joint declaration with the UK in 1984.

On China’s Uighur ethnic group, the UK has accused China of "gross and egregious" abuses over the past few years, pointing to Human Rights Watch estimates that around one million Uighurs are being held in detention camps. Beijing has flatly dismissed the accusations, adding that the facilities that rights groups are referring to are in fact "vocational training centers" used to eradicate extremism and stamp out poverty.