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The United Kingdom’s shortest serving prime minister Liz Truss visited Taiwan on May 16.
Cannot be trusted
Truss’ visit, organised by Taiwanese thinktank the Prospect Foundation, delivered a keynote speech on May 17 advocating for the UK to avoid appeasing China, and unreservedly back Taiwan, according to Reuters.
Truss is now a Conservative party backbencher, after she resigned as prime minister after just 45 days, with her radical approach to the economy resulting in severe backlash that was only limited by the UK’s central bank intervention.
Prior to becoming PM, she was foreign minister under her predecessor Boris Johnson.
She accused European nations of washing their hands of Taiwan, calling it completely irresponsible, according to Bloomberg.
“The only choice we have is whether we appease and accommodate – or we take action to prevent conflict.”
She also cast doubt on the prospect of cooperation with China, saying that China’s totalitarian approach means it cannot, especially on Taiwan but also on shared goals such as climate change.
She also called on Taiwan to be admitted to the CPTPP, at China’s expense.
Instagram diplomacy
Reuters reported that her speech comes at a particularly tricky time for her successor as UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
UK-China bilateral relations are at a low point, with a recent strategic review of relations by the UK stopping short of calling China a strategic threat.
But Truss’s visit has been met with hostility not only by China, but other members of her own Conservative party.
Truss’ visit was branded as “the worst kind of Instagram diplomacy”, by the Chair of the UK Parliament’s foreign affairs select committee Alicia Kearns, according to the BBC.
Kearns, who is also a Conservative party member like Truss, dismissed Truss’ visit as a “vanity project” to “keep herself relevant”.
Truss’ spokesperson apparently dismissed the criticism, implying that the UK parliament’s most senior foreign affairs committee member was a backwater yokel.
She said she had been invited by Taiwan’s democratically elected government, and they knew best what was in the interest of Taiwan’s people.
An Observer op-ed noted that Kearns was well placed to assess the potential damage that Truss might cause to not just Sino-British relations, but to the people of Taiwan too.
It argued that Kearns’s own political prospects had been damaged after Truss’s performance as prime minister.
Obsolete
Truss’ visit was unfavourably compared to that of the then United States Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose own visit prompted a week of provocative and unprecedented military exercises by China.
The British government is itself trying to repair its relationship with China, with the BBC quoting the UK’s foreign minister James Cleverly as saying that isolating China was against the UK’s national interest.
China’s embassy in London labeled the visit as a “dangerous political stunt”, according to the BBC.
The Global Times, which is owned by China’s Communist Party, was far less reserved in its criticism, labelling Truss an “obsolete” politician, as well as reflection on Truss’ bad personal image in the UK”.
However, criticism of Truss’ visit in the UK was not as widespread as GT wished to imply, all its critical quotes were pulled from the same Observer op-ed.
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Image via Liz Truss/Facebook
