The I, March 16, Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP
The release of the long-awaited Integrated Review, the overhaul of UK’s defence and foreign policy, shows that the UK is beginning to realise the scale of the challenges posed by China’s burgeoning global influence.
For the first time, China is recognised for what it is – the single biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security. The Chinese government have repeatedly coordinated cyber-attacks against UK targets and have turned a blind eye to industrial-scale intellectual property theft from British businesses.
Britain’s over-dependence on China for crucial medical supplies, dangerously exposed during our reliance on Chinese-made PPE at the onset of the pandemic, is also implicit in the report. The Covid death count worldwide is now over 2.5 million and China’s refusal to cooperate with the World Health Organisation (WHO) has shown that China is not a dependable partner on the world stage. We cannot rely on the Chinese government to be the gatekeeper for our critical supply chains.
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