When Mike Pompeo meets a group of Conservative backbench MPs on Tuesday who have been pressing for the UK to take a harder line on China, it will not be for a victory lap as some in Downing Street might hope. The hawkish US secretary of state wants to encourage the Conservative rebels to keep pushing for Britain to go further than banning Huawei from 5G phone networks and suspending the extradition treaty with Hong Kong. Not they need much encouragement. There are no shortage of Tory backbenchers who want further diplomatic and economic restrictions on Beijing, a cause espoused so keenly by former Brexiters such as David Davis and more centrist MPs such as Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, that they sometimes compete among themselves. “There are multiple issues we need to push ahead with as part a general China reassessment and we are keen that the government continues to move,” said Bob Seely, who helped organise a bloc of 50 MPs in a year-long campaign to demand that Huawei be blocked from future 5G networks. Top of the list now are calls for China to be barred from involvement in building nuclear power stations, whether as a minority investor in Hinckley Point, in Somerset, or as a prime contractor, as in the case of a proposed project at Bradwell in Essex. Others want a review of Beijing’s impact on UK higher education. More than 120,000 Chinese attend British universities, making a critical contribution to their funding, but there remains concern about China’s involvement in UK research in areas such as facial recognition and cryptography. The climate is changing so fast that Iain Duncan Smith, a former Tory party leader, even called on Monday for a ban on TikTok, the popular video sharing app, “because of its proximity to Chinese intelligence services” – a point that defenders of the company have argued makes little sense given it is a home for “short, homemade videos”. But it is hard to escape the conviction that China policy is being driven by the Conservative backbenchers – many looking for a grand cause after winning the Brexit argument – in alliance with an aggressive, trade-obsessed White House. “Like a lot of countries, we are flapping in the wind,” said a political adviser who worked under Theresa May’s premiership. “But if Dominic Cummings wouldn’t let IDS run the Brexit campaign, why would he let him set the policy on China?” The hawks’ position has been helped by the crisis in Hong Kong, where China’s decision to impose a draconian national security law and in effect end the “one country, two systems” model has helped ensure there is Labour and other opposition support for a tougher line. Concerns loom large across the political spectrum about the brutal treatment of China’s Uighur Muslim minority, where there are reports of mass enforced sterilisation and detainment in “re-education camps”. Confronted with drone footage of blindfolded and shackled prisoners on the BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, tried to imply it amounted to a “fake accusation” and then that there may have been “single cases” of mistreatment. In the Commons on Monday, Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, was quick to support her opposite number, Dominic Raab, when he announced the suspension of the extradition treaty. “This must mark the start of a more strategic approach to China based on an ethical approach to foreign policy,” she said. Meanwhile, China defenders have almost evaporated, even though it is less than five years since David Cameron and George Osborne were plugging a new “golden era” in Chinese-British relations and encouraging companies such as Huawei and China General Nuclear to invest in the UK. Business lobby groups say there are now genuine worries that China could hit back with targeted restrictions on British business and multinationals such as GlaxoSmithKline and Rolls-Royce. But one business source added: “Nobody wants to speak out at the moment.” It is an astonishing change in sentiment in little more than a few months, partly fuelled by the impact of the coronavirus crisis. That revealed how the extent to which the UK and other western countries are dependent on Chinese manufacturing and trade – including in areas such as the supply of paracetamol and other drugs and the manufacture of personal protective equipment. Tim Summers, a senior consulting fellow on the Asia-Pacific programme at Chatham House, csaid: “There is not much nuance in the argument at the moment.” He added: “It seems to have got to the point where there are worries about the supply of plastic gloves, when the reality was that the NHS didn’t stockpile enough before the pandemic hit.” A letter signed by 17 Conservative backbenchers two days ago that called for the UK to suspend extradition arrangements with Hong Kong was only three paragraphs long and emotively argued. “We are all going to have to ask ourselves if we recognise the Chinese Communist party’s definitions of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion,” it read. There is little doubt that there is more to come, and there are even growing predictions of a decoupling between the west and China as countries such as the UK are forced to chose between a US-led bloc and a far eastern one, although there would be economic costs in doing so. China was the UK’s sixth-ranked destination for good and services, accounting for 3.6% of the total, while Chinese companies have made investments in the UK that have been welcomed by ministers, such as the purchase and rescue of British Steel and its plant in Scunthorpe by Jingye Group in March, which helped to protect 3,000 jobs. Veerle Nouwens, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “It is important for the UK to draw red lines around issues such as human rights. But the conversation around decoupling is not as easy as some people make it out to be either.”