Iain Duncan Smith has said he was impersonated by a pro-China “wolf warrior” and has called for the country to be labelled a threat to UK security.
The former Tory leader said on Monday that the “wolf warrior”, a term used for combative proponents of the Chinese government, had impersonated him and sent emails to politicians around the world suggesting he had changed his views about Beijing.
He was speaking at a press conference with two other MPs who were briefed by security services on Monday about cyber-attacks against them by actors linked to China.
Tim Loughton, another Tory MP who has been critical of the Chinese government, said he was “particularly concerned” about Uyghur rights activists whose families were contacted by pro-Beijing figures after they associated with critical MPs.
Later on Monday, ministers are expected to announce that Beijing-linked hackers were behind a cyber-attack on the Electoral Commission which exposed the personal data of 40 million voters, as well as 43 individuals including MPs and peers.
Duncan Smith, who has been sanctioned by China for criticising its government, said he and his colleagues had been “subjected to harassment, impersonation and attempted hacking from China for some time” but added that MPs would not be “bullied into silence by Beijing”.
He continued: “We must now enter a new era of relations with China, dealing with the contemporary Chinese Communist party as it really is, not as we would wish it to be.
“Today’s announcement should mark a watershed moment where the UK takes a stand for values of human rights and the international rules-based system on which we all depend.”
He called for China to be labelled a threat in the government’s integrated review, which sets out the UK’s foreign, defence and security policies. It currently refers to China as an “epoch-defining challenge”.
China should also be in the “enhanced” tier under the foreign influence registration scheme, sanctions should be imposed on those responsible for human rights abuses in China and support should be given to MPs and others targeted by Beijing in the UK, Duncan Smith added.
During her brief tenure as prime minister, Liz Truss sought to update the integrated review to formally designate China a “threat” to Britain but these plans were dropped after Sunak took power.
Speaking at an engineering firm in Barrow, Rishi Sunak would not be drawn on the expected announcement, but echoed the language used in the government’s foreign policy review.
He said: “We’ve been very clear that the situation now is that China is behaving in an increasingly assertive way abroad, authoritarian at home, and it represents an epoch-defining challenge, and also the greatest state-based threat to our economic security.
“So, it’s right that we take measures to protect ourselves, which is what we are doing.”
