The two finalists to replace Boris Johnson as Britain’s prime minister called for tougher policies on China as they challenged each other’s responses to Beijing while in government in a televised debate on Monday night.

Britain’s relationship with China was one of several key issues that came to the forefront during the prime-time broadcast as Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak audition to succeed Johnson in Number 10 Downing Street.

“What we do need to do is acknowledge that China is a threat to our national security. It’s a threat to our economic security,” Sunak said. “We also need to stand up for our values. When it came to Hong Kong, I was pleased to ensure that we put the funding in place to welcome to this country thousands of people who left Hong Kong.”

Truss pushed back that Sunak was advocating for a closer trade relationship with China as recently as a month ago when he was still in government and said, “I’m delighted that you’ve come around to my way of thinking.”

“Frankly, what we’ve heard from the Treasury is a desire for closer economic relations with China,” Truss said. “My view is we should not repeat the mistake we made with Russia of becoming strategically dependent on Russia. ”

The Truss-Sunak debate has been viewed as a key moment in the race to become the next leader of the ruling Conservative Party. Later this summer, about 160,000 party members will vote for their next leader, who is expected to become prime minister when Parliament returns from its summer recess on September 5.

“Of course, we need to protect our values, stand up for our country, protect our country against threats,” Sunak said. “That’s not incompatible with engaging with countries around the world when it’s in our interest to do so.”

In response to a question about TikTok and its reach in the lives of young Britons, Truss said Britain should be “absolutely” cracking down on “those types of companies” and limiting technology exports to authoritarian regimes.

“I don’t think it is inevitable that China will be the biggest economy in the world. We’ve been enabling that to happen,” Truss said. “We have to learn from the mistakes we made of Europe becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas. We cannot allow that to happen with China.”

Sunak did not directly say whether he would target TikTok but touted his involvement in the passage of new national security rules that give the government the power to block investment from “countries and companies we think are not consistent with our values or interests”.

The race has been marked by a series of increasingly personal attacks by allies of each candidate, particularly around Sunak’s personal wealth and bespoke suits. Sunak, whose wife is the daughter of Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy, worked at Goldman Sachs and two hedge funds before entering politics.

“The puerile nature of this leadership contest is embarrassing,” Johnny Mercer, the veterans affairs minister, said in a tweet on Monday. “Time to raise the standards.”

Monday night’s showdown on BBC – the first of two televised debates before the voting – came a day after Sunak, who headed the Treasury as chancellor of the exchequer before resigning this month, accused British politicians of “rolling out the red carpet and turning a blind eye to China’s nefarious activity and ambitions”.

“China is the biggest long-term threat to Britain and the world’s economic and national security,” Sunak said in a press release on Sunday.

Sunak pledged as prime minister to close the 30 Confucius Institutes operating in Britain, create a “Nato-style international alliance” to defend against Chinese technological aggression and examine the need to prevent Chinese acquisitions of key British assets, including strategically sensitive tech firms.

Several British MPs have lobbied to ban Confucius Institutes, which provide Mandarin language education and cultural exchange opportunities, saying they are being used for propaganda purposes and to spy on Chinese students studying abroad.

Truss’s allies have accused Sunak of being “soft” on China and Russia as chancellor, including pushing for trade opportunities with Beijing amid questions about suspected human rights abuses.

It is unlikely that Sino-British relations will improve significantly under either Sunak or Truss, according to analysts, amid growing British concerns about the use of Chinese technology in key infrastructure, alleged human rights abuses in China’s far western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and the adoption of a controversial national security law for Hong Kong.

Earlier this month, Sunak gathered the most votes in several rounds of voting among MPs to winnow down the field of eight candidates to two finalists. However, Truss has overtaken him in recent days among the Conservative membership, according to opinion polls.

Truss garnered 49 per cent of the votes, compared with 31 per cent for Sunak, in the most recent opinion poll of Conservative voters by the polling firm YouGov. The remaining 21 per cent said they did not know whom they would choose or would not vote in the contest.

Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour Party leader, accused the leadership contest candidates on Monday of engaging in “Thatcherite cosplay”, referring to their repeated references to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher as they have outlined their visions for Britain.

“What we’re seeing from the leadership contest is two individuals who are part of the problem,” Starmer said after a speech in Liverpool on improving Britain’s economy.

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