Editor's note: John Wight is a writer and political commentator. He is the author of Edinburgh Trilogy and a memoir, Dreams That Die, recounting his experience of Hollywood and participation in the U.S. antiwar movement in the run-up to the war in Iraq. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

There's nothing like a spot of China bashing to burnish the foreign policy credentials of the putative leaders of a post-colonial state like the United Kingdom. Both the contenders for the leadership of the country's ruling Tory Party, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak and current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, are outdoing themselves in spouting the "yellow peril" Sinophobic tropes not this prevalent in the West since the 1950s and 60s, when the Cold War was at its height.

In the wake of Boris Johnson's resignation as UK prime minister, his ex-chancellor Sunak – a billionaire former financier – has been cultivating an image as a "sensible Thatcherite" at home and anti-China hawk abroad. By pledging to close down the 30 Confucius Institutes in the UK that promote the Chinese language and culture, Sunak is clearly intent on the demonization of China as the enemy without as a means of social cohesion within.

Aligning with the head of the MI5, the UK equivalent of the United States's FBI, Sunak has identified China as "the biggest long-term threat to Britain and the world's economic and national security."

Such inflammatory rhetoric should not be peddled by any serious, rational individual, much less one afforded a national media platform as a contender for the highest office in the land. It immediately places the approximately 124,000 Chinese currently living, studying and working in the UK at risk of racist attack and abuse as the implied enemy within.

While Sunak has clearly allowed himself to be swept up by the British colonial fervor unleashed by Brexit in 2016, Truss has gone out of her way to promote belligerency as the means to advance British interests in the world.

Consider some of her comments during her speech at the NATO Summit in Madrid in June: "My very strong message is we have to defeat Russia first, and negotiate later." Or "That is why it is so important that the free world work together to help ensure that Taiwan is able to defend itself and to stress the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits," suggesting that NATO should arm Taiwan, which is a Chinese province.

Arming the province of a sovereign country in the name of peace and stability is an oxymoron, and an inherently dangerous one. The use of Taiwan as a Trojan horse to advance a geostrategic agenda is rooted in blunting China's recovery from the "century of humiliation" it endured between the 19th and 20th centuries at the hands of the West and Japan and should fool no one. Truss cares less about the interests and welfare of the people in Taiwan and more about their usefulness as pawns in the game of hegemony and unipolarity.

That China, merely by its existence, strikes such terror into the hearts of leading British politicians is proof that it is doing something right. When British leader Winston Churchill opined that "we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them," he articulated the anti-China racism that dominated the thinking of the British political establishment then and is also doing so now.

China's rise lies at the root of this Sinophobia. It has catalyzed the urge for some kind of misplaced revenge in the West. However, here, Confucius sounds a warning: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."

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