Beijing is likely to react badly to Sunak’s Integrated Review

It was only last summer that Rishi Sunak declared China ‘the largest threat to Britain’, but in today’s refreshed Integrated Review, the ‘T’ word has been reserved only for Russia. Instead, China has been labelled ‘an epoch-defining and systemic challenge’ in a document setting out the UK’s approach to foreign policy. What happened to the bolshy Sunak of the Tory leadership race? The Prime Minister now says that ‘I don’t think it’s smart or sophisticated policy to reduce our relationship with China… to just two words.’

This will infuriate the most hardline of the Conservative party’s China critics, such as Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who has already called it ‘an extension of project kowtow’, and Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss, who as prime minister had initially ordered this update of the Integrated Review in order to make it tougher on China.