Boris Johnson will step down as British prime minister in early September, giving way to one of five candidates. Because of the ruling Conservative Party’s parliamentary majority, whoever wins the party’s leadership contest will become prime minister.
Two of the candidates, Tom Tugendhat and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, are pro-American in their views (though Tugendhat slammed President Joe Biden over the August 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal and is more concerned by Russia than China). Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch would maintain close U.S. relations. But Rishi Sunak is another matter. When it comes to this preeminent U.S. and global security concern, that of Communist China, Sunak appears dovish.
In late January, Sunak told the Telegraph that he wanted a “complete sea change” in relations with Beijing, with boosted trade ties amid tensions over other issues. This public statement marked a significant break with the rising consensus in Parliament that Britain’s policy toward China had been too focused on financial interests at the expense of human rights and security concerns. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has further exacerbated this feeling. Until this year, Britain and the Conservative Party, in particular, were happy to be a laundromat for Russian illicit finance.
Regardless, the Chinese Communist Party is all in for Sunak. While I understand that there is no evidence of direct interference in the leadership contest thus far, it is possible future interference may occur. On Thursday, China’s Global Times propaganda outlet effectively endorsed Sunak as its favored candidate. The newspaper praised the former chancellor of the exchequer (Britain’s equivalent of the U.S. treasury secretary, but with far greater political and budgetary power — Sunak quit as chancellor last week in protest over Johnson’s leadership) as the only leadership candidate who has “a pragmatic view of developing balanced ties with China.”
It added that “standing too close to the U.S. to serve its major power competition strategy will actually weaken the UK, and being too provocative against China won’t bring anything good for Britain, so if the new prime minister can return to the policy of mercantilism and pragmatism, the UK will find new opportunities and could become more competitive by improving ties with China.”
Mercantilism is Beijing’s preferred prism for how Western powers should approach China. Beijing wants to leverage its variable ability to offer and obstruct massive economic investments as a means to secure Western silence on other concerns. The problem, at least from the perspective of the United States and other allies like Australia and Japan, is that those other concerns encompass many critically important issues. They include China’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, its genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province, its imperialist claims over the South China Sea, its threat to subjugate Taiwan, its voracious intellectual property theft, and its support for regimes such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which jeopardize global stability.
Unfortunately, Sunak appears open to striking a deal with the Communist devil.
In a keynote speech last year, then-Chancellor Sunak rebuked parliamentarians calling for a tougher stance against Beijing. Instead, he called for bolstering economic links alongside addressing other concerns. Sunak said, “Too often, the debate on China lacks nuance.” Sunak then referenced the utterly irrelevant point, frequented by China doves, that cooperation is important because China is a “vast, complex country, with a long history. … We need a mature and balanced relationship.”
Let’s be clear: This is 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. Still, Sunak is undeterred. Thanks to his efforts, the first U.S.-China trade talks in three years appear set to begin in the coming days. Sunak is no longer chancellor, but he has been the driving force on this summit and in resisting the U.K. defense and foreign secretaries in advancing a more resolute stance in the face of China’s aggression in other areas.
With Sunak currently the front-runner to become prime minister, the U.S. has reason to be concerned. Perhaps the prime minister’s intelligence briefings will change his mind? But there’s no surety.
