UK Relations with China

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing this debate. I agreed with the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) when he said that the hon. Gentleman had got the tone of the debate exactly right. His speech was measured and balanced.

We can talk about many positives when discussing China. According to market research, 86% of the Chinese population are happy with their Government, which is a rating that many of us in democracies around the world would be happy to achieve. In many ways, it is clear that China is a wealthier, more liberal, diverse and, in some respects, freer society than it has ever been before.

There are some examples of extraordinary tolerance of democratic systems. We must remember that it was widely feared that Hong Kong might lose its multi-party system, independent judiciary and freedom of expression when it became part of the People’s Republic, but all have been preserved. The country may not be democratic in quite the way that we would like to describe ourselves and other countries around the world, but those things have nevertheless been respected.

There is, of course, the phenomenal economic achievement, which benefits this country enormously. In the first two years of the coalition Government, British exports of goods to China increased by 40%. The Foreign Office estimates that Chinese investment is worth as much as £8 billion a year to the British economy, which is not to be sniffed at. Companies such as Huawei are making an important contribution to telecommunications and, however controversially, they are also investing in such things as nuclear power stations.

There are, however, many alarm bells. The hon. Member for The Wrekin was right to point out that China does not do itself any favours or earn a good reputation in many areas. I will quickly run through seven alarm bells. Domestic human rights is only one of them and is still a major problem. Reports in the last year from Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International, Pen International and Reporters Without Borders have put China in the bottom few countries of the world in terms of respect for human rights and for freedom of expression. Many of them put Tibet in the worst category of all. The most recent Foreign Office human rights report, issued in 2012, still mentioned the

“use of unlawful and arbitrary measures to target human rights defenders… These included enforced disappearance, house arrest, restrictions on freedom of movement, communication and association, extrajudicial detention (including ‘re-education through labour’ (RTL), ‘black jails’ and involuntary psychiatric committal) and harassment of family members. Human rights defenders also continued to be subjected to criminal charges and procedurally flawed trials, often involving the poorly defined category of offences encompassing ‘endangering state security’. Diplomats and media were repeatedly refused access to their trials.”

That kind of active physical oppression is mirrored on the internet, where, as hon. Members have said, access to sites such as Google and the BBC is restricted. It is clear that China is far from being a good example to the rest of the world on human rights.

As China’s economic power grows, so does its influence in many other parts of the world. Its record on its impact on human rights in other countries is also pretty terrible. Regimes such as Sudan and Zimbabwe have benefited from Chinese patronage. Despite supposed international trade sanctions, China provides a large amount of funding to the North Korean state, which has an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners detained in concentration camps, where they perform forced labour and risk summary beatings, torture and execution.

Topically, the Chinese Government have been friendly towards the Government of Sri Lanka, openly providing weapons and military equipment, which was used against the northern Tamil population—perhaps legitimately during the civil war, but perhaps not so legitimately since then—in the way that has been much discussed in this place recently. There is also, I am afraid to say, the close relationship between China and Syria, which we have also discussed at length.

It is not only that there is tolerance of dictatorial regimes; China has enormous economic power that it is now beginning to wield in Africa, where Chinese investment has overtaken that of the USA and is proving quite controversial in many respects. Chinese demand for ore, timber and oil is forcing African states to specialise at the bottom of the value chain, meaning that they are not developing their economies in a positive way. There is large-scale Chinese immigration into many African countries, which, in places such as Ghana, has flared into violence with many Chinese being brutally beaten and some 200 being deported. This frankly pretty careless attitude towards its impact on other countries is a matter of grave concern.

The hon. Member for The Wrekin mentioned the environment, specifically animal welfare. Again, it is not only animals in China that are affected; rhino and elephant populations around the world are affected by the demand for ivory and other products and shark-finning affects shark populations. Within China, there are ill-planned hydrological engineering projects, which interrupt the natural flow of rivers. The conversion of wetlands for agriculture and unsuitable construction and infrastructure projects on flood plains have destroyed ecosystems and driven species out of their natural homes. That most iconic of species, the panda, has been left fighting for survival in many places as its habitat has been cleared to make way for agriculture, timber and fuel wood.

It is not that we can always stand in the way of economic development or that it is possible to develop a country economically without some disruption to the environment. However, other countries have learned that they must protect the environment as they grow and develop—India has certainly recognised that—and that if they do not, they lose something enormously precious; indeed, in biodiversity terms, it is precious to the whole planet.

To those concerns, we could add others about intellectual property rights. Businesses that try to do business in China still have to struggle with problems over the respect for patents and intellectual property. There are also problems with cyber-attacks, including the toleration of repeated attacks on commercial and governmental institutions, which seem to originate in China. Finally, we have the worrying picture of militarisation in east Asia, which must be giving some of the democratic countries and some of our traditional allies in the region real pause for thought.

The overall picture is one of an enormous global power awakening and becoming a superpower once again. All its potential partners appear to have a working assumption that it will always exercise its power benignly. We are somewhat like rabbits caught in the economic headlights: we see the enormous value of trade and business, and we are so worried about any risks to it—particularly after the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister met the Dalai Lama, resulting in the freezing of relations with top officials for several years—that we try to brush the complex picture of policy I have described under the carpet in the pursuit of economic relationships.

It was rather sad that the coalition agreement, of which I am, in many respects, very proud, had only one line about China. It said:

“We will…seek closer engagement with China, while standing firm on human rights in all our bilateral relationships.”

In other words, we will pursue trade, and we will perhaps go through the motions of the rather formulaic human rights dialogue we have with the Chinese Government. However, we do not seem to have appreciated the complexity of China’s impact on democracy, the environment, human rights, trade and peace all over the world.

The Government need to have a more comprehensive and holistic China policy, and we need to encourage the European Union to have one, too. We probably need to encourage the Commonwealth to develop a China policy, given China’s deep involvement in Africa and fact that some of its membership comes from Africa. Democracies around the world, including Japan and other countries in eastern Asia, might also need to develop a comprehensive and holistic response to this emerging superpower. Simply pursing trade at the expense of everything else could be quite a dangerous policy in the long run, and we have to be a little cautious about that.