China hawk Iain Duncan Smith is having trouble keeping up with the government’s ever-evolving stance on the CCP. As IDS points out, Rishi first claimed China was “a threat”, which then changed to “a challenge“, and now, in the Integrated Review Refresh, appears to have finally settled on “an epoch-defining challenge”. This morning Rishi insisted it was not “smart or sophisticated” to call China a threat in the first place. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly somewhat clarified things by saying “it is impossible to distill it down to a simple word or phrase… we recognise international relations are more complicated”.