<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1666701347467,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017f-e2f4-de00-a7ff-e7fff8030000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1666701347467,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017f-e2f4-de00-a7ff-e7fff8030000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_66274459", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1121641"} }); ","_id":"00000184-0f24-d5ff-a7af-1fff3fa00000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedLess than two months after losing a Conservative Party leadership election, Rishi Sunak is the United Kingdom’s new prime minister. Sunak will end Liz Truss’s record-short premiership, which imploded after a revolt against her economic plans.
Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street will raise concerns in Washington and hopes in Beijing. The diverging sentiments take root in indications that Sunak perceives China more through the lens of trade interests than he does security concerns. And it’s a consideration that takes on particular emphasis at the moment.
After all, Truss’s aborted economic reform program has sent jitters through the financial markets. And with international investors already concerned over what Britain’s “Brexit” departure from the European Union might mean for its longer-term status as a global financial capital, Sunak is under pressure to restore economic stability in short order.
China will be banking on that pressure. Beijing will hope to leverage its ability to offer massive new trade and investments in order to earn Sunak’s political fealty on other concerns. The new prime minister’s hesitation to support escalating U.S. efforts to constrain China’s threats to Taiwan and technology capture efforts would be particularly valued by Beijing, for example.
US INDICTMENTS AND HU JINTAO PURGE PROVE COMMUNIST CHINA’S OBSESSION WITH CONTROL
Ominously for Washington, Sunak has previously hinted that he is open to such an arrangement. Serving as chancellor of the exchequer (Britain’s powerful Treasury Secretary/budget chief minister) earlier this year, Sunak called for a “complete sea change” in British relations with China. This followed another speech Sunak gave last summer, in which he claimed, “Too often, the debate on China lacks nuance.” Sunak observed that China is a “vast, complex country, with a long history. … We need a mature and balanced relationship.”
In July, noting Beijing’s praise for Sunak’s “pragmatic view of developing balanced ties with China,” I suggested that Sunak’s assessment represents “the kind of rhetoric officials use when they want political cover to make concessions in China’s favor. Being pragmatic is not and cannot be the same as being a patron of the Communist Party’s agenda. But that’s exactly what a mercantile-predominating strategy toward China would entail.”
Sunak’s words echo those used by the China-trade-at-all-costs former British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne.
To be sure, Sunak has since adopted a more hawkish stance toward China, as the facts require. Trying to narrow Liz Truss’s polling lead during the previous leadership election this summer, Sunak pledged to ban Confucius Institutes in Britain, to strengthen intelligence monitoring of Chinese government activities, and to review Chinese acquisitions of stakes in the U.K. technology sector. The question is whether these pledges were just plays to the Conservative primary voters or reflections of a real shift in Sunak’s thinking. It will thus be instructive to see whether Sunak makes early legislative commitments in these areas or quietly allows them to fall off the policy radar.
But one thing is clear. Both Washington and Beijing will be watching Britain’s new prime minister very closely.
