Former UK PM Truss To Visit Taiwan, Risks Derailing Sunak Gov't Strategy

Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss is set to visit Taiwan from 16-20 May, and deliver a speech at the Prospect Foundation think tank in Taipei on 17 May. She will also meet with senior gov't officials according to the Taiwanese foreign ministry. Truss, a well-known China hawk within the UK's governing Conservative Party, could derail the Sunak gov'ts recent attempts to signal a small thaw by moderating its language on Sino-British relations.

• Beijing is unlikely to approve of Truss' visit, but the level of response from China will be less overt than that seen following former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in 2022.
• At that point, Pelosi was still in office and the third highest-ranking elected official in the US behind President Biden and VP Harris. Truss on the other hand is the UK's shortest-ever serving PM and now sits on the backbenches without holding ministerial office.
• There have been some small but noticeable signs of a thaw in tensions between China and the West in recent weeks. UK Foreign Sec James Cleverly's Mansion House speech in April was seen as an effort to move away from the hardline hawkishness of the Truss premiership towards a more pragmatic stance (albeit still viewing China with a wary eye).