China

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord West, on bringing us this short debate on an enormous subject. He really is one of the few experts in this field who understands the new realities. I am afraid it is rather few as well; we need more debate and more understanding.

I will make two quick points in the limited time. First, we should be far more aware of Chinese encroachment on Commonwealth member states—and others of course, but particularly Commonwealth member states—in the global south, Africa, the coastal states and the Caribbean. In the South Seas, their wish to have a naval base in the Solomons Islands is just the latest example. This involvement is not just commercial—unrepayable loans, infrastructure and so on—it is becoming military as well, with officer training and weapons training. This has security implications for this country.

Secondly, China now controls port facilities in 53 countries round the world, and has belt and road initiative memorandums of understanding with 141 countries, including 38 Commonwealth members. As part of its desire for hegemonic control of Asia, and getting the Americans, whom they loathe, out, it is eyeing the Taiwan takeover opportunity and assessing whether Ukraine is an encouragement or a reason for delay—fascinating scenes. There is also, as the noble Lord reminded us, the Chinese hacking activity. Military intelligence people now tell us that it exceeds those of all other countries combined. This is a part of the invisible war. The war in Ukraine is very visible and very primitive. Maybe it is the last of its kind—who knows? Meanwhile, quiet, invisible wars are taking place and beginning to undermine our structure and our desire to reposition ourselves in an entirely changed world.

I am not Sinophobic, but we are heading for major foreign policy failure if we ignore these developments and allow the Commonwealth network—a worldwide alliance of like-minded countries—to crumble away and align itself with autocracies and those who flout international law.