Liz Truss is to visit Taiwan next week, where she will deliver a speech likely to anger Beijing and potentially upset the UK government’s careful approach to China relations.
The former prime minister said on Tuesday: “Taiwan is a beacon of freedom and democracy. I’m looking forward to showing solidarity with the Taiwanese people in person in the face of increasingly aggressive behaviour and rhetoric from the regime in Beijing.”
Truss’s office said on Tuesday she was also expected to meet senior members of the Taiwanese government.
When the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan last year, China claimed it had put its army on “high alert” and announced targeted military operations including missile tests.
The UK Foreign Office is aware Truss is travelling to Taiwan. The government has been attempting to deal with Beijing’s growing economic and political reach, with other influential Conservative MPs also pressing the prime minister and his cabinet to take a harder line.
A government spokesperson said: “We wouldn’t get involved in the independent travel decisions of a private citizen who is not a member of the government.”
A Foreign Office spokesperson added: “We have no diplomatic relations with Taiwan but a strong, unofficial relationship, based on deep and growing ties in a wide range of areas, and underpinned by shared democratic values.”
The trip follows recent speeches by Truss on China – in Tokyo in February and to the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing US thinktank, in Washington DC last month – where she began setting out how she believed free western democracies should toughen their stance on Beijing.
She is expected to deliver the Taiwan speech in the early hours of the morning UK time at an event organised by the Prospect Foundation thinktank. It was among groups China imposed sanctions on last month in retaliation for Pelosi’s meeting with the Taiwanese president.
The Prospect Foundation said the title of Truss’s address would be “Taiwan: on the frontline of freedom and democracy”.
The organisation described her as “one of the key players in bringing the security of the Taiwan Strait into the UK’s international vision” at a time when the UK was adjusting its global strategy after Brexit and a diplomatic tilt towards the Indo-Pacific region.
Asked how the trip was being funded, a spokesperson for Truss said it could be expected that she would update her entry in the register of members’ interests in the usual way on her return.
Declarations show a previous trip to Washington DC was funded to the tune of £7,600 by the Heritage Foundation, which covered flights and accommodation for her, her husband, two children and a member of staff in the middle of April.
A Chinese government spokesperson said at the time that the thinktank was under sanctions for its involvement in promoting Taiwanese independence.
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Truss, who has begun efforts to revive her career after her short-lived tenure in Downing Street by focusing on foreign relations, used her 2023 Margaret Thatcher freedom lecture in Washington last month to assail “wokeism”, praise Ronald Reagan and portray herself as the victim of a vast political conspiracy.
However, the UK government will be listening carefully to how she expands on her views about China in Taiwan. She used her US visit to condemn the French president, Emmanuel Macron’s recent trip to Beijing to ask for support in ending the war in Ukraine as a sign of weakness.
The trip comes after a warning by the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, that Britain should not “pull the shutters down” on China, as it would be counterproductive to the national interest
In a warning to Conservative hawks, he told the Guardian there was not a binary choice to be made between treating China as either a threat or an opportunity, and said the UK’s approach needed to be more nuanced.
Since the lifting of pandemic travel restrictions Taiwan has hosted a slew of foreign dignitaries, including the Australian ex-prime minister Tony Abbott and the former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
Beijing does not always respond, but has in the past threatened “countermeasures” or made strong objections, particularly when the visitor or delegation is high ranking.