Amid rising global concern over Beijing’s expanding influence, the Conservative leadership contender has stirred a heated debate by refusing to label China as a threat.
At an event at the Conservative Party conference, Kemi Badenoch said: “I have shied away from calling China a threat because I think that if you escalate in language, then you need to be ready to escalate in action.
“I have tried to do other things as trade secretary, supporting Taiwan and making sure we give those people who are our allies our support.
“But we are very complacent about some of the economic threats that China is putting on the whole world. When I would go to WTO [World Trade Organisation] meetings everybody was worried about China. We are not alone in this.
“What we need to make sure is that we have a resilient economy, that it is not economically coerced by bigger countries, that means being very focused on what we do well, making sure that we are able to manufacture if we are in a dangerous position, increasing food security, increasing supply chains, that is how we deal with the threat that is coming from China.”
Badenoch has also suggested she would review the 2050 net zero targets saying countries like China have “a far bigger impact than we do”. She added, “There’s no point being the first to get zero if we’re also the first to get bankrupt.”
Tom Tugendhat, another Tory leadership hopeful and former security minister, has recently suggested China’s leadership team are “tyrants”, telling Conservative Party members, “I’ve been in Parliament, standing up against the dictators and tyrants that at the time some people thought were friends but we now know to be exactly who they are – [Vladimir] Putin and Xi [Jinping] and the Ayatollah – call them all out.”
