China

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lord West on procuring this debate and I wholly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just said about the need for a much deeper discussion of these issues. My own two-pennorth is a plea for a little nuance in this discussion of China. Yes, it is an autocracy and does terrible things. Yes, it is investing massively in military force and, yes, we have to be wary of its technological ambitions. But we should not lump it together with Russia. It is not like Russia.

In my view, the legitimacy of the Chinese regime fundamentally depends on its continued success in raising living standards at home, and that depends on its continued engagement with the world economy. The West should continue to engage with the Chinese to manage globalisation better. For example, without Chinese involvement we will make no fundamental progress on the crucial question of climate change.

I do not want to see an attempt to isolate China in order, as it were, to start a new Cold War. I do not agree with that. When I was chair of Lancaster University, I supported investments in Chinese campuses and promoted, along with my council and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, a lot of Chinese students coming to our university.

The second point of nuance that I would like to make is that we have to be realistic about our defence commitments as a country. I am a strong supporter of an increase in the defence budget, but I remember the Labour Government having the debate, back in the 1960s, about withdrawing east of Suez. Do you know how much we were spending on defence in 1968? We were spending 5.9% of our GDP to maintain that global defence role. I ask Members of this House whether, in our present reduced economic state, we really think Britain is in a position to go back to that level of global defence commitment. We have to be very careful about what commitments we make.