China: Human Rights and Security

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, rather like Christmas, which seems to come around faster every year, so the opportunity to change British policy on China seems to come around rapidly. Under the coalition but particularly, one sensed, when George Osborne was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there was a great opening up to China and a great interest in having investment. We then saw a pivot to thinking that China was perhaps a threat and a country with which we should not necessarily work closely—although we never stopped doing business with it. We are waiting for His Majesty’s Government’s China audit, but at the moment we have the Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s three Cs: competition, challenge and co-operation.

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool for bringing this very important debate this afternoon. It is indeed timely, not just because of the 40th anniversary of the Sino-British Hong Kong agreement, but precisely because there is an audit and we have very recently seen the Foreign Secretary meet his Chinese opposite number and the Prime Minister meet President Xi—the first time, as I understand it, that a British Minister met the president in six years.

In that time, many things have changed in the United Kingdom—Prime Ministers have changed almost as often as the calendar—but in China, very little has changed. If you have a president for life, long-term policy-making can be very different, so Chinese planning for security and Chinese actions against Tibetans and Uighurs persist. At this point I must briefly mention an interest, in that I have recently become a trustee of the Parliamentary Human Rights Trust. I do not think it directly affects this debate, but I thought I should mention it because clearly, one of the concerns that this House, the International Relations and Defence Committee and committees in the other place have long had is precisely human rights issues in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.

What assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the situation in Xinjiang? The excellent report from the House of Lords Library suggests that Ministers have been talking about possible forced labour in the supply chain. Shadow Minister Mike Wood responded:

“As we move forward, all UK businesses must conduct thorough due diligence to ensure that their supply chains are free from forced labour”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6 November 2024; col. 66WH.]”


Excellent, and that is exactly what should be happening, but what mechanism is there to ensure that it does? While we absolutely should be calling on the largest companies named in various reports—companies such as Rolls-Royce, which clearly have every opportunity to ask the right questions—what about the smaller companies? Do they really have the opportunity to engage in that due diligence, which is vital but also very difficult, and yet another imposition on small and medium-sized companies?

Apart from human rights concerns, which we have already heard thoroughly outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, there are significant security issues that are not necessarily talked about very frequently. What assessment are His Majesty’s Government making of Chinese interests in the Arctic and Antarctic? China sees itself as a near neighbour of the Arctic—one that clearly has business interests, in that, the more navigable the Arctic Sea region becomes, the greater the interest. President Xi suggested on meeting Prime Minister Starmer that we could co-operate and that there are areas of common interest in trade and investment. Where are those trade and investment interests coming from? Do they benefit the United Kingdom, or do they benefit only China?

There is a final question I want to ask, about higher education. I very briefly declare my other interest, as professor of European politics at Cambridge University. This is an issue that affects universities across this country and in the United States: the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. A quick internet search suggests that universities in the UK and the US have active Chinese Students and Scholars Associations. It is not entirely clear who funds them, but they appear to be intended partly to allow host communities to find out more about China and to allow Chinese students to have full feedback to China. Are His Majesty’s Government reassured that these are entirely neutral organisations simply serving the mutual benefit of the host university and the students; or are they also an opportunity for China to look for students to investigate, spy on—to use a word that is perhaps unfortunate—and feedback on fellow students, particularly students from Hong Kong, perhaps, who may feel vulnerable?