Long-Term Strategic Challenges Posed by China

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, I am also grateful to the Minister for giving us the opportunity to study and discuss this question of the long-term strategic challenges posed by China. It will be no great surprise, and scarcely a matter of a declaration of interest, for me to say that liberal democratic principles are absolutely key for me and liberal democratic practices are something that I want to continue to engage in and encourage. Nor would it be doing more than stating the obvious to say that this was not shared by the People’s Republic of China.

In doing so, it is important for us to try to deepen our understanding of what is happening in our wider world. It is changing, and it is not easy to know how best to deal with it. It is important that we stand up for principles, for example those of human rights. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, for commending my noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool for his strong stance in that regard—not only in respect of China, but notably so.

I also noted what the noble Lord said about Taiwan and the WHO. It reminded me of an experience I had myself quite some years ago. I was president of Liberal International, which has had consultative status on the ECOSOC committee of the UN since 1985. But, in March 2007, the DPP, a member party from Taiwan, was on a Liberal International delegation at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. The question of WHO membership for Taiwan was raised by the DPP member—not very surprisingly. There was no questioning of the diplomatic status of China, which had always been respected by Liberal International—just the possibility of WHO membership for Taiwan. However, the People’s Republic of China took grave exception to this, and in May of that year, 2007, just a few weeks later, the UN NGO committee recommended the withdrawal of general consultative status for Liberal International because of this incident.

I discussed this with UN representatives from a number of our friendly nations: the United States, all the EU members and the ambassadors of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Israel and of course the United Kingdom. All of them were opposed to the exclusion of Liberal International on the basis of this episode. However, it became clear that it was going to be approved anyway, because the People’s Republic of China in 2007 effectively had control of the United Nations General Assembly. There were enough of the other members that were going to support the PRC whatever the situation. So, I engaged directly with representatives of the People’s Republic of China at the embassy here in London, and after negotiations we were able to reach an agreement. It was that Liberal International would accept exclusion for one year but the PRC would not object to its restoration and, when restored, the LI would observe a self-denying ordinance whereby its delegates would not address, in the name of Liberal International or as part of its delegation, issues that referred to its own domestic agenda. Others could refer to the case of Taiwan but not the Taiwanese. The Taiwanese could refer to anything else; Taiwan was not even mentioned in the agreement, but the background to it was very clear.

That was accepted by the PRC and I wrote to the chairman of ECOSOC in that regard. Liberal International was removed for 12 months and then came back. There was no objection from PRC and has not been in the 15 years since then. I took three things from that. The first was that, while I had previously visited Taiwan, I had not, I think, understood quite how exquisitely sensitive the issue of Taiwan was. Indeed, one of the diplomats from the embassy here said to me, “It is the most important foreign policy issue for China”. I said, “Look at all the other important issues”, but he said, “No, you don’t understand. It is the most important issue”. I think we need to keep that in mind.

Secondly, whatever our thoughts about these things and however much support we have from our traditional friends, the General Assembly of the United Nations has, in effect, been controlled for some decades by the PRC, which also has its veto power in the Security Council. Thirdly, and more positively, if one were to reach an agreed and negotiated outcome, the PRC would live with it and continue to do so. As I said, 15 years later, it has not reneged on the decision on Liberal International.

The situation in our world changed and we have to recognise that we are no longer quite the power that we were in the West. In 2008, undoubtedly educated by that experience the previous year, I wrote a paper with my friend Sundeep Waslekar about talks and dialogue in the Middle East. We did not call it “the Middle East” because he comes from India, so I learned that to him it was “west Asia”—another example of how we need to take into account the cultural and intellectual perspectives of others from a different part of the world. It was published in India and Global Affairs in 2008. We wrote:

“If Israel and the Arab parties do not find a comprehensive solution soon, Iran can be expected to be an even more direct player in the near future. If a few more years are allowed to pass”,


Russia and China will develop significant stakes in the region. We also said that, at that time, it would have been possible to negotiate knowing English, Hebrew and Arabic, but if it were left too long people would need to learn Russian and Chinese as well.

One of the difficulties that has emerged is about our understanding and appreciation that people have very different perspectives from ours. As liberals in the Isaiah Berlin tradition, we have long been prepared to indicate that, of course, others have cultural differences from us and different principles and perspectives. But when they start having different perspectives on, say, human rights or fundamentally different cultural perspectives, or an attachment to forms of religion we do not easily accept, our tolerance and appreciation of those differences sometimes become difficult to sustain. For example, in July 2023, an article in China Daily, “Toward a Fair World Rights Order”, described how very important it is that we accept that there is no enforcement of

“uniformity on others, in the belief that certain traditions and systems are inherently superior”.

When we were sure that ours would be superior and would carry the day, we would have been happy to sign up for that, but now that that is no longer the case it is much more of a challenge for us. It seems to me that there is a very significant challenge, intellectually and politically, to us as we to try to struggle with this question.

I will take a more practical aspect: economics. One of the things that struck me a great deal when engaging with colleagues around the world was how absolutely enormously much of the rest of the world resents the power of the US dollar. The fact that it is the reserve currency has allowed massive debt to be created that can be resolved simply by printing more dollars. My sense of things, as I have listened to people over the last few years, is that we may well, in the next year or two, find Russia, China and others trying to construct some kind of alternative reserve currency. We have been through that before: sterling used to be a strong reserve currency. We still have our pound, but it is not in the same place as it was. If the United States finds itself experiencing that, it will be difficult intellectually—in terms of human, civil and political rights—to complain about it, but the consequences would be absolutely enormous; indeed, potentially catastrophic. It seems to me that there is a lot to be said as we struggle with these questions, so I entirely appreciate that, when the integrated review refresh talks about

“an epoch-defining and systemic challenge”,

it is absolutely right to do so.

It is important to appreciate that China is a challenge, a competitor—it may be a rival in some areas but I am not sure that we measure up enough for it to be a rival in the major areas. Economically, the rivalry is with the United States and the European Union, militarily it is with the United States, but what is crucial is that this rivalry, challenge, difference and disagreement do not lead us into what Graham Allison called the Thucydides trap of making China into an enemy. That is why it is crucial that the Foreign Secretary went to Beijing, kept open the channels of communication, talked, listened and engaged, because when someone is a competitor or a rival, but you maintain communication, they do not necessarily need to become an enemy. You can sit there and disagree, argue, discuss and perhaps even sometimes to some degree change each other’s mind, but you do not become an enemy. What humankind would not be able to sustain is China becoming an enemy of the United States, Europe and our allies.

There are many things that we can co-operate on. Some of them have been mentioned by the Minister: environmental questions, crucially, and artificial intelligence. I welcome the fact that the Chinese will be here next month at Bletchley Park. There is the whole nuclear question. In the 1970s, we had to engage across the Cold War divide with Russia and establish the CSCE and, ultimately, the OSCE. Why? Because we agreed? No, because we did not agree and we needed to engage with those whom we disagreed absolutely profoundly, including on all issues such as human rights, the economy and so on. Why? To make sure that there was still a world for our children and grandchildren to inhabit and not one that was destroyed by nuclear war.

It will be absolutely critical that on a question of that kind we have the kinds of structures that enable us to engage China and ensure the safety of the world. China can be helpful to us on the Russia/Ukraine question, it can be helpful to all of us on the Middle East question—the west Asia question—and it can even be helpful to us on issues such as North Korea, but it will be able to be helpful only if we can disagree in a civil way, engage in communication and collaboration on some common interests, and ensure that China becomes whatever kind of competitor—and it may be more successful than we would like to believe—but that it does not become an enemy.