China poses the biggest challenge to global security and prosperity of our age with the “means and intent to reshape the world order”, Rishi Sunak has said.
The UK prime minister said G7 leaders including Japan, the US, Canada and European nations had shown “unity and resolve” in confronting the problems posed by Beijing.
The statement from the G7 nations referred to “de-risking” rather than “de-coupling” from their relationship with China amid warnings from France that the summit should not be seen as being anti-Beijing.
However, Sunak went further than the summit statement in outlining the threat that China poses to the world, appearing to rank it even higher than Russia as a global security threat.
Speaking from a peace centre in Hiroshima, the site of one of the atomic bombs dropped by the US in 1945, Sunak said: “We will work together as the G7 and other countries make sure that we can de-risk ourselves and the vulnerability of supply chains that we have seen from China, take the steps necessary to protect ourselves against hostile investment and do so in a way that doesn’t damage each other.”