United Kingdom: Ms. Liz Truss, former British Prime Minister, has called for “free nations” to commit themselves to a “free Taiwan” and support it with concrete measures.

During a keynote speech delivered in Taipei, Ms. Truss said she had come to show support for Taiwan, which was “on the frontline of the global battle for freedom” and under threat from a totalitarian regime in China. The former British PM arrived in Taiwan for a five-day visit and is expected to meet senior government officials.

“We cannot pretend we have meaningful deterrence without hard power. If we’re serious about preventing conflict in the South China Sea, we need to get real about defence cooperation,” Ms. Truss remarked in a speech and panel discussion for a Taiwan thinktank, the Prospect Foundation.

The former PM noted that the world could not rely on the UN Security Council or the World Trade Organisation and instead called for a “network of liberty”, with free nations working together to develop an “economic NATO” to coordinate pushback against Beijing.

According to the Conservative Party’s leader, the G7, which will meet this weekend in Hiroshima, needed to coordinate economically against Chinese economic coercion, saying “bullying on a major scale” was taking place across the international area.

Ms. Truss further added that Beijing was using Taiwan’s international participation as a strategy and called for Taiwan’s membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership to be fast-tracked and approved, while China’s was denied.

Ms. Truss is a hawkish member of the British Conservative Party, and her speech appeared to rebuke comments made by current members of government and their European counterparts.

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