Is the UK planning to terminate relations with China?

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that the so-called golden age of relations with China is over and promised to evolve the UK's stance against the Chinese Communist Party. In his first foreign policy speech, the Prime Minister said the close economic ties of the previous decade were naïve. And he argued that the UK now needs to replace wishful thinking with robust pragmatism via its competitors. However, he warned against Cold War rhetoric, adding that China's global importance could not be ignored. Sunak has faced pressure from conservative MPs to toughen the UK's stance on China since taking office as Tory leader and UK Prime Minister last month. And his speech before the Mayor of London's banquet comes on the heels of protests in China since November 24th against COVID-19's tough policies, among other issues. Police have made several arrests and a BBC journalist was detained while covering a protest in Shanghai on November 27th. At the time of his arrest, people beat and kicked him and held him for several hours before releasing him. On November 28th, Sunak told a group of business leaders and foreign policy experts that, in the face of the protests, China had chosen to crack down further, including by assaulting a BBC journalist. We recognize China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism. The reference to the golden era is associated with closer economic ties under former Prime Minister David Cameron. Since then, relations between London and the Chinese regime have deteriorated. However, Sunak stressed that China's importance in world affairs for global economic stability could not be ignored. And he added that the UK would work with its allies, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan to manage this increasingly intense competition. It means standing up to our competitors, not with grand rhetoric, but with robust pragmatism. Sunak's predecessor, Liz Truss, planned to reclassify China as a threat to the UK as part of a foreign policy review. In his speech, Sunak echoed the phrase used in the review that China is a systemic challenge. He said that there would be more details of the review next year. However, the robust pragmatism line in his speech was criticized by former Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith, one of the backbenchers advocating a tougher line. In response to Sunak's speech, he wrote in the Daily Express that he said that China had become a clear and present threat to the UK and its allies. I wonder if robust pragmatism now sounds more and more like appeasement. Labour's Foreign Secretary David Lammy called the speech thin as porridge and accused the Prime Minister of changing his rhetoric on China. All it shows is that once again the Conservative government is flip-flopping its rhetoric on China. Instead of talk, we need policy. The government urgently needs to publish its long-promised China strategy as well as its update to the integrated review that is already out of date. Many political analysts consider Sunak to be less belligerent with the CCP than his predecessor, Liz Truss, who resigned in October after 49 days as Prime Minister. However, London and the Chinese regime have sharp disagreements over human rights abuses in Hong Kong and in Xinjiang province, which has a large Uighur Muslim minority that has been persecuted in recent years.