The UK’s relationship with China has rightly become a key focus for our foreign policy. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, and James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, must grapple with how to respond to China’s increasingly erratic aggression, demonstrated recently by its actions towards Hong Kong and Taiwan. This goes further than China’s influence in Asia, the recent exposure of secret Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “police stations” operating on UK soil serves as a timely reminder that it is a threat to all countries.
Until recently the western consensus was that closer economic ties would steer China away from authoritarianism and towards the free world. Nothing could have been further from the truth — after consolidating absolute power at home, the CCP is now looking to