Source · Select Committees · Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Rejected
The Integrated Review designated China as a “systemic competitor”.
Recommendation
The Integrated Review designated China as a “systemic competitor”. Strong language that is not coupled by action does nothing to alleviate confusion, and risks increasing uncertainty and undermining our credibility. The Government needs to be firmer and more explicit in articulating the UK’s security interests when it comes to China. The primary responsibility of the state is to keep its people safe. China poses a significant threat to the UK on many different levels. We would support the Government changing the language from “systemic competitor” to “threat” if it were accompanied by carefully calibrated and proportionate policy change, particularly on domestic resilience and security, rather than empty rhetoric. (Paragraph 17) Coherence of Government policy on China
Government Response Summary
The government rejects the recommendation to change the language from "systemic competitor" to "threat," arguing that it is not smart foreign policy to simplify the approach to China to a single word.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
14. The UK has increasing concern about actions of the Chinese Communist Party as it becomes more authoritarian at home and assertive overseas. However, we must also recognise China’s size and importance on almost every global issue, and the UK national interest in advancing British interests directly with China. The UK policy on China, as set out in IR2023, combines these two currents. As the Foreign Secretary said in his Mansion House speech on 25 April; it is impossible, impractical, and unwise to sum up China in one word, whether ‘threat’, ‘partner’ or ‘adversary’. It is not smart foreign policy to simplify our entire approach to China – a country of 1.4 billion people, the 2nd biggest economy in the world, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council – to a single word. 15. We will continue to take a robust, proactive, and multifaceted approach to our relationship with China, rooted in the UK’s national interest and values. This is, as IR2023 sets out, an epoch-defining challenge for our country and the free world. In practice this means strengthening our national security protections wherever Beijing’s actions pose a threat to our people or our prosperity, deepening alignment with partners in the Indo- Pacific and across the world, and engaging directly with China to preserve and create open, constructive and stable relations. 16. China remains, as identified in the original IR, the biggest long-term state-based threat to the UK’s economic security. IR2023 affirms that, where tensions arise with our other objectives on China, we will always put national security first. Coherence of Government policy on China Conclusion/