Rishi Sunak has warned that an increasingly authoritarian China poses the “biggest challenge of our age” after discussing how to tackle aggression from Beijing with western allies.
The Prime Minister said that it is the “only country with both the means and intent to reshape the world order” after meeting with leaders at the G7 summit in Hiroshima on Sunday.
He said their approach was about “de-risking” the situation rather than “decoupling” and cutting ties with China as they seek to bolster supply chains and tackle economic coercion.
“China poses the biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity. They are increasingly authoritarian at home and assertive abroad,” Mr Sunak said, in a speech before leaving for London.
The G7 leaders, which include US President Joe Biden, announced it would establish a new team to root out and counter Russia and China’s use of economic coercion to influence nations’ decisions.
They also discussed concerns about Chinese aggression towards Taiwan.
“There is complete resolve and unity within the G7, first of all just recognising the systemic challenge that China poses to the world order,” Mr Sunak told reporters.
“It is the only country with both the means and intent to reshape the world order.”
He said the leaders would work to reduce “vulnerabilities” in supply chains from China and protect their nations from “hostile investment”.
“We also had conversations about ensuring that important technology pertinent to our security does not leak to China,” he added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel