Why China could be Truss’s best hope for rehabilitation

This week two former Foreign Secretaries offered competing visions for how Britain should engage with China. On Wednesday, Philip Hammond was quoted in China Daily as championing a ‘trade-first approach’, urging politicians to ‘return to business as usual’ and ignore ‘background noise.’ And last night, Liz Truss set out a much more hawkish alternative, using her first post-premiership speech in Japan to make the case for strengthening ties with Taiwan and countering ‘the rise of a totalitarian China.’

The fact that these two politicians served alongside each other in successive Cabinets for five years – with Truss working as Hammond’s deputy for two of them – is testament to the divergence and shifts of opinion within the Conservative party on this issue. Both speak for rival factions. Hammond is articulating the kind of pragmatic, pro-business conservatism that was a cornerstone of the Cameron years and still shared by some within the Commons like Richard Graham, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on China.