Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss earned £80,000 ($101,600) in four hours this year during a visit to the self-ruled island of Taiwan that drew criticism from within her own Conservative Party.
The UK’s shortest-serving prime minister received the payment from Taiwanese think tank, the Prospect Foundation, according to the UK parliamentary register of members’ financial interests.
Truss addressed the organization in May, delivering a speech in Taipei that slammed China and accused Europe of failing to stand by the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own territory.
“There are still too many in the West who are trying to cling on to the idea that we can cooperate with China,” she said. “You can’t believe a word they say,” Truss added, referring to authoritarian regimes.
By comparison, when the British politician traveled to the US to deliver a speech to the Washington-based conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, in April she was only compensated for her expenses, according to the register. Those expenditures were estimated to total some £7,600.
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received $150,000 from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office to make a trip to Taiwan early last year, local media reported. He visited the island at the invitation of the same think tank as Truss, which was sanctioned by China earlier this year.
Truss’s premiership imploded last year after a 49-day run that plunged the UK’s financial markets into turmoil. Her successor Rishi Sunak has sought to reset ties with the world’s second-largest economy, and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is mulling a trip to Beijing later this month, Bloomberg earlier reported.
Taiwan’s ruling party welcomes visits by foreign delegations, despite the angry reaction such trips prompt from Beijing. China opposes all official contact with the government in Taipei, viewing it as tacit recognition of the island as an independent nation, one of Beijing’s self-declared diplomatic red lines.
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