James Cleverly has insisted that not engaging with China would be a show of weakness as he defended his trip to Beijing this week.
The Foreign Secretary touched down in the Chinese capital on Tuesday evening, becoming the first person in the role to visit the country in half a decade.
Mr Cleverly’s trip will lay the ground for Rishi Sunak’s meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, which is being sought for the G20 summit in India next month.
But it has also exposed splits within the Tory party about how to strike a balance between engaging with, as well as standing up to, China.
The Telegraph understands that there are figures around Mr Sunak’s Cabinet table who are against Mr Cleverly’s trip.
‘Sucking up’
A senior Whitehall figure accused the Foreign Secretary of “sucking up” to the Chinese and questioned the wisdom of the visit.
Mr Cleverly has now taken critics of his trip head-on and defended the diplomatic engagement.
The Foreign Secretary told the Financial Times (FT): “To consciously withdraw and not utilise our standing in the world, the authority and voice that we have, that would be seen as a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength.”
He also appeared to dismiss the approach of Liz Truss, the former prime minister, who first appointed him as foreign secretary.
Ms Truss had wanted to designate China a “threat” in a reworked foreign policy and diplomatic strategy document.
Mr Cleverly was quoted by the FT saying he would not conduct foreign policy by “catchphrase”.
The Foreign Secretary will discuss Hong Kong, the climate crisis and the war in Ukraine with senior Chinese officials in the first visit by a British foreign secretary to China since 2018.
Sanctions on British MPs
He will also press Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, and Han Zheng, the vice president, to lift sanctions on British MPs in a series of meetings on Wednesday.
But one of the MPs sanctioned by China, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader who has long called for a tougher stance from the UK Government towards Beijing, criticised the trip.
Sir Iain said: “The problem with our position right now is it smells terribly of appeasement.
“It’s like we want more business, therefore we don’t want to upset the Chinese too much.
“The problem we have got with that is it’s redolent of the 1930s where we just thought ‘just be nice to these people and complain occasionally but don’t do anything’.
“The result is, what we end up with is, that they think we are just too weak.”
Mr Sunak had been due to meet Mr Xi at the G20 summit in Bali last November but the meeting was cancelled at the last minute due to developments in the Ukraine war.
Another meeting is being sought for the G20 summit in India, which Mr Sunak will attend in early September.
The Prime Minister has notably backed away from his tough rhetoric on China, which he adopted during his 2022 Tory leadership race, instead talking up the need for engagement.
Calls for UK to boost ties with Taiwan
Mr Cleverly’s visit coincides with the release of the Foreign Affairs Committee report on the Government’s “Indo-Pacific tilt”, which calls for the UK to boost its ties with Taiwan to curb Chinese expansionism.
The report is likely to rile his hosts in Beijing with its robust calls for the UK to “protect” Taiwan’s right to self-determination, defining it as having “de facto independence”, and criticism of officials for failing to clarify their long-term strategy in the region to better deter a “more aggressive” China.
“Taiwan is already an independent country, under the name Republic of China (ROC),” the report said.
It added: “Taiwan possesses all the qualifications for statehood, including a permanent population, a defined territory, government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.”
The question of Taiwan’s sovereignty is highly sensitive for China’s Communist Party leaders, who claim the democratic island as their own territory despite never having ruled there.
It is understood that Mr Cleverly will discuss Taiwan with Beijing officials, along with Xinjiang, Tibet, the South China Sea and Hong Kong.
The UK Government acknowledges but does not recognise Beijing’s One China Principle that declares Taiwan as part of China and says the territorial dispute should be resolved “through dialogue” on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
The new report calls for stronger UK measures to “deter and punish Chinese aggression” towards Taiwan by directly calling out Beijing for its intimidating rhetoric and military manoeuvres and work to secure Taipei’s membership of international organisations.
It recommends the UK to work with allies to “prepare economic sanctions against China, to be applied in the event of an invasion or economic blockade of Taiwan” and not to recognise Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan if it takes it without the consent of the Taiwanese.
“Taiwan is an important ally and partner of the UK. The Government should stand shoulder to shoulder with Taiwan, making clear that attempts to undermine Taiwanese self-determination are unacceptable,” said Alicia Kearns MP, chairman of the committee.
In one of its broader conclusions, the committee “recognises the activities of the Chinese Communist Party as a threat to the UK” and requests the UK Government to publish an unclassified version of its China strategy.
