Liz Truss urges Rishi Sunak to describe China as a ‘threat’ to UK security

Former prime minister Liz Truss has called for her successor Rishi Sunak to say China is a “threat” to UK security.

Ms Truss was speaking in Taiwan’s capital Taipei, where she said that Mr Sunak should deliver on language he used during last summer’s Conservative Party leadership contest.

He had described China as the “biggest long-term threat to Britain”, as well as promising to close all of Beijing’s Confucius Institutes in the UK.

The institutes promote Chinese culture at universities as well as in some schools.

Ms Truss said: “He was right and we need to see those policies enacted urgently.

“The UK’s integrated review needs to be amended to state clearly that China is a threat.

“Confucius Institutes should be closed down immediately. Instead the service could be provided by organisations with the support of Hong Kong nationals and Taiwanese nationals who have come to the UK on a free basis.”

Ms Truss, who lasted just 44 days in Downing Street, is making what is thought to be the first visit of a former British prime minister to Taiwan since Margaret Thatcher in the 1990s.

She also warned that the West should not work with China and that totalitarian regimes “don’t tell the truth”.

“We know what happens to the environment or world health under totalitarian regimes that don’t tell the truth – you can’t believe a word they say.”

She added that China is “undertaking the biggest military build-up in peacetime history … They have already made their choice about their strategy.

“The only choice we have is do we appease and accommodate that strategy or do we take action now?”

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Ms Truss’s visit comes at a time of growing tension in the region, with China increasing pressure on Taiwan, which it says must unite with the mainland by force if necessary.

Taiwan continues to claim independence from China.

Ms Truss called for a “more coordinated approach so Taiwan has the defence it needs” in the face of Chinese aggression, adding that Western countries “need not to engage in further economic dialogue with China while it takes this aggressive stance”.