UK to designate China a ‘threat’ in hawkish foreign policy shift

Downing Street said the prime minister had commissioned an update to the Integrated Review partly in response to an increasingly aggressive China. Photograph: Reuters/Alamy

China is to be formally designated a “threat” to Britain in a hasty rewrite of Boris Johnson’s defence and foreign policy that is being brought forward to end confusion among ministers about how to deal with Beijing.

Under Johnson, China had been categorised as a “systemic competitor” but the new prime minister, Liz Truss, wants to take a more hawkish stance quickly, as she seeks to shore up support for her faltering premiership on her backbenches.