Commonwealth
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, I declare two interests; first, as the former chairman of the Council of Commonwealth Societies, a post in which I have been so admirably succeeded by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. I should also declare an interest as vice-president of the English Speaking Union, the role of the language in the Commonwealth and its future being of seminal importance.
By CHOGM next year, we should know a lot more about the direction and balance of Brexit. Brexit will be a key dimension to CHOGM, because it can reshape in many ways our relationship with the Commonwealth and its relationship with us and the European Union. Let us not forget that 32 countries of the Commonwealth are covered by specific EU agreements and it is calculated that our departure will end up making them pay well over £800 million per annum in additional duties to access the UK market and through the UK as a member of the European single market.
There are significant sums in sterling remitted to Commonwealth countries by individuals from the Commonwealth living here, and thus sterling’s effective devaluation is already having a harsh effect. That was made clear to me at a conference I attended yesterday and the day before, the youth Commonwealth Africa summit. In many ways, it was a most encouraging conference, but strong feelings were expressed on that issue. Brexit cannot be ignored as blandly at CHOGM as it clearly was by the Chancellor in his Budget a week ago.
Many factors will affect our future relationship with the Commonwealth. In assessing them, we must recognise the huge contribution that Her Majesty the Queen has made to the coherence, the cohesion and the recognition of the Commonwealth. Just to share a personal recollection, I was born in South Africa of British parents. My father was in the church and an anti-apartheid activist in early days, close to Father Huddleston. I remember vividly as a boy the visit to South Africa in April 1947 of the then Princess Elizabeth and her broadcast—which incidentally was reprinted and distributed, even in apartheid days when the nationalists had come to power, to schools throughout what was then the Cape Province. I will remind your Lordships of the key words of that statement. She said:
“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service”.
I think that we all recognise, and the Commonwealth recognises, the extraordinary extent to which she has fulfilled that declaration. Let me express the view—of course, it is only a personal view—that the Crown’s future relationship with the Commonwealth will matter much, both to the Crown and to the Commonwealth, and I hope that it will continue.
Turning more specifically to the economic landscape before CHOGM, let me warn against a temptation which is becoming evident in London to see our course as “a return to the future”. Rhetoric around what has been dubbed “Empire 2.0” is not only misleading but in the Commonwealth will certainly be resented. There is a danger that we seek to rewrite history in reverse. After all, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, as the logic of European integration became clearer, British politicians sought to reconstruct Europe in some ways as a copy of the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth as a copy of the European Union. For example, Harold Macmillan’s well-remembered note to Anthony Eden in the early 1950s read:
“The answer is not for Britain to join such a Europe but to propose the unification of Europe along Commonwealth lines”.
A few years later, Harold Wilson, as he approached what would be the great Commonwealth Trade Ministers conference, argued in a sense for the potential of the Commonwealth to emulate the European Union as a trading bloc. He was bitterly disappointed.
The truth is that the Commonwealth cannot replace the European Union by seeking to emulate it—I agreed with what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, had to say around that subject. The Commonwealth Secretariat, wonderful organisation though it is, will never become, nor should it try to become, a kind of emulation of the European Commission: a driving, organising, administrative force for greater integration.
The way forward is to think afresh. I want to put forward five factors which are worth us considering and to seek a government reaction on them. First, what are the real focus points of potential in the Commonwealth for us now? The first, which is quite remarkable, is the growth of intra-Commonwealth trade, of which we are a part. The growth of that trade was largely unremarked on until Brexit and the discussion thereafter, but it is of great importance.
The second is the entrepreneurial opportunity presented by the youth of the Commonwealth—the vigour, the creativity and the entrepreneurial instinct of many young people within the Commonwealth today—and the fact that the great cities of the Commonwealth, particularly in Africa, are becoming markets of great importance to us and to them.
The third—here again I refer to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howell—is the information technology, the mobile telephony and the new connectivity which characterise a global economy but which are particularly important in the developing countries of the Commonwealth. The impact of mobile telephony, for example, on agriculture in Africa is an extraordinary achievement and we must make the best of that.
Fourthly, there is the shared English language, to which I briefly referred. The important thing here about English, which is not the official language of the Commonwealth but is its working language, is that it is also the working language of globalisation so that the future trade patterns that emerge will be substantially dependent on the English language.
Finally, we hear a great deal about shared values in the Commonwealth and we have also heard during this debate sad examples of where values, particularly on human rights, have not been respected. Again, at this conference yesterday and the day before, where there were many young people, I was very struck by shared aspirations—if not shared values. For example, there were aspirations about the primacy of law and the fight against corruption. I chaired a session in which there were two parliamentary representatives from the Commonwealth. It focused on corruption and how you deal with it. I was astonished by how frank and practical that discussion was. Then of course there is the aspiration about the advance of parliamentary democracy inside the Commonwealth.
On balance, I am very hopeful about the future relationship with the Commonwealth and urge the Government to commit, with vigour, to the furtherance of these five dimensions—of course, there are others—which have such rich potential for the Commonwealth.
Populism and Nationalism
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, four decades ago when we joined what was then the European Economic Community, I was working for the BBC and was asked to script and present a life story of Jean Monnet—“the father of Europe”, as he was then called. I got to know him pretty well. I found him not to be an ideological man but a rather optimistic pragmatist. His consistent theme, however—the right reverend Prelate the Bishop will note this; it is rather like Hobbes—was that he believed deeply that it was not natural for men or nations to unite, and that it would happen only under enormous pressure of necessity. For him, the enormous pressure of necessity that he had experienced in his own lifetime were the two world wars. He drew on that experience to argue his case and he was in many ways very successful.
I have spent a good deal of time over the last two years working on a history of Winston Churchill in 1946, and in particular the two great speeches he made during that year after he had lost office and when he was quite seriously depressed. The first was at Fulton, Missouri—the so-called “Iron Curtain” speech—and, six months later in Zurich, the “Europe arise!” speech. In both cases, rather similar to the Monnet experience, he was driven by a sense that unity and a degree of interdependence were essential not just as a theoretical ideal but in order to deal with overwhelming necessity. In the Fulton speech, he argued that the huge Russian preponderance in Europe and the malign intentions of Joseph Stalin necessitated an unprecedented degree of unity between the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, as it then was, and the United States, and that this had to provide a deterrent to Soviet power. He was remarkably successful in that argument, although it was hugely controversial at the time and he was attacked by a great number of people in the United States, including the whole of the Roosevelt family.
Six months later he made the second speech in Zurich. Again, he was driven by this sense of necessity—that unity had to occur because the alternatives were so grim. In particular, faced with the destruction and exhaustion of Europe, he believed that France and Germany had to be reconciled and that those two countries had to take the lead in building what he called a kind of United States of Europe. That first speech in effect triggered a process which led to the Berlin airlift, and certainly greatly facilitated it, and eventually to NATO. The second one was enormously important in enabling the Americans to make the generous initiative of the Marshall Plan and, later on, Jean Monnet with the Coal and Steel Community.
I have said that both those speeches ignited fury and intense opposition—the second one particularly from General de Gaulle. But after decades the habit of interdependence has sort of taken hold. It has also been taken for granted—and this is the cause of its great vulnerability. For today, this habit of interdependence has been, and is being, challenged as we have not seen in decades. As many noble Lords have observed, tomorrow Donald Trump will become President Trump. His intention and direction are towards deals that will, and can, erode the post-war international liberal order—for example, a deal to be forced on Mexico to build a wall and perhaps a deal with Russia that could destabilise the Baltic and erode NATO’s credibility. Whatever Brexit means, it must mean Britain opting out of the project to unite Europe. It will fundamentally challenge the assumption and aspiration of ever-greater unity, breaking a habit and direction of interdependence.
So what can follow from all this? First, division between competing national interests. Two weeks ago, the New Yorker magazine defined very accurately and rather intellectually what Trumpism was all about. It stated that he is about,
“secure borders, economic nationalism, interests-based foreign policy”—
the elements that, taken together, can corrode and erode and eventually destroy a liberal international order.
The second thing that follows is suspicion, distrust and a growing belligerence of language—and language is important. You have only to look at Boris Johnson’s latest verbal folly to understand the perils of inadequate control over language. But it is not just Boris Johnson; we should look at the headlines which sought to encapsulate the Prime Minister’s speech on Tuesday. I shall read out a few of them. The Times stated:
“May to EU: give us a fair deal or you’ll be crushed”.
The Telegraph stated:
“No deal is better than a bad deal”.
The Daily Mirror stated:
“Give us a deal … or we’ll walk”.
The Daily Mail referred to,
“an ultimatum to Brussels”.
The Daily Express stated:
“Deal or no deal … ‘We will leave’”.
The headlines are, of course, more belligerent, and their tonality sharper, than the words used by the Prime Minister. She was much more careful and was feeling and calling for a degree of understanding. But I feel that we have had a warning from what has happened this week and we must take careful note of it.
The third thing that can follow, therefore, is illusion and miscalculation. Let us take just one key example—the outcome on transitional arrangements for the City. Mark Boleat, the policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said last week that if Britain leaves the EU with no deal, it will still be possible for London to retain its centrality in financial services. He added:
“But this will not just happen. It will require political and business leadership on a scale we have not seen in this country”.
I remind the House that Winston Churchill said in 1946 that we needed to learn the “bitter dear-bought experience” of two world wars and not throw it away. We are in danger now of casting away these lessons of bitter dear-bought experience. If we do so, we will rue it.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, I, too, add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for initiating this important debate. I suppose I should declare two interests. One is that for six years I chaired the Council of Commonwealth Societies, in which role I was succeeded by the ever-young noble Lord, Lord Howell. I also chair the Commonwealth publisher, Nexus.
In attracting the attention it deserves, paradoxically, the Commonwealth—and, indeed, CHOGM—is challenged by some of its greatest strengths: its global reach of 53 countries; its diversity; and its highly developed economies, right the way through to, for example, India. But it also has less-developed, hard-pressed economies—in many cases in small island states—that are vulnerable to the impact of climate change. There is then the extraordinary fact, referred to several times in the debate, that 60% of the 2.2 billion inhabitants of the Commonwealth are aged under 30.
Diversity makes the Commonwealth somewhat hard to describe and its interests hard to define. It is not easy copy for the media. Television finds it simpler to cope with Davos in January than it does with CHOGM in December. In the United Kingdom the Commonwealth is generally regarded as a good thing, but what is its clout? Uniquely, the Queen has given it its face and identity. Her commitment to the Commonwealth is one of the greatest achievements of her reign, but maybe her contribution peaked at Marlborough House when she signed the charter. It is interesting that on the very first page of the charter, the Commonwealth is described as,
“a compelling force for good”.
Who can really explain why? The answers are of course there—a shared language, shared values and many shared legal systems—but “compelling”?
I will briefly focus on two facets that can prove to be truly compelling in the years ahead. The first is the Commonwealth’s support and advocacy for what the Prime Minister has described as,
“judicial independence, legislative capacity building and election monitoring”—[Official Report, Commons, 30/11/15; col. 3WS.]
In all these, the secretariat—now to be headed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, who is a wonderful appointment—acts with discretion and a great deal of effectiveness. It is becoming more and more important. We are all depressed by the advance of extremism and the violence attached to it—of course we are. But the fact is that the thrust of history is not with that violence, nor that extremism. South Africa’s transition from apartheid, in which the Commonwealth played a vital role, illustrates that. Although Myanmar is not currently in the Commonwealth, the elections held there point in the same direction. What is greatly important is the monitoring of elections and the effectiveness of transitional jurisprudence. The Commonwealth can indeed play a compelling role in that.
Secondly, and finally, there is the Commonwealth’s unique network of small island developing states, to which I have referred. Given their importance in the Paris agreement on climate change, CHOGM was a kind of curtain-raiser for Paris. It was no accident that the President of France attended CHOGM. The potential of the Commonwealth is indeed compelling. It constitutes one of the greatest assets for good in our dangerous world.
BBC: Russian Language Programming
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the BBC about increasing its Russian language programming and distribution, including via the internet.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
The FCO and the BBC World Service meet regularly to discuss areas of co-operation, including Russia. However, any decision to increase Russian language programming and distribution would be an operational decision for the BBC World Service to make.
Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I understand the relationship between the FCO and the BBC World Service and indeed, the technical and political obstacles to increasing broadcasting inside Russia. However, does the Minister not agree that, if there is to be a bridge of understanding rebuilt with Russia—it is imperative that there is—it is essential that we have the ability to inform directly Russian public opinion about the situation in east Ukraine, why it so deeply disturbs the rest of Europe and indeed, why sanctions are being imposed? To this end, will the Minister encourage the BBC as it considers—as I believe it is doing—news gathering capability in Russia, and its possible increase, and the output for BBCRussian.com?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I am sure that the BBC will be listening to the views of Peers. Of course, the relationship between the Foreign Office and the BBC World Service is a framework agreement. I stress that the FCO has its framework agreement with the BBC World Service—its strategic partnership—not with the BBC as a whole. Of course, it is important that a trusted broadcaster, such as the BBC World Service, should be able to provide balanced editorial work throughout not only Russia, but in other countries as well. That is what it does. What we can do is work to protect the BBC World Service from any threat to its operations, such as jamming, visa restrictions and threats to journalists. That, we do.
Russia
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, I declare a number of interests. I was an adviser to the Romanian Government when they were negotiating their membership of the European Union. I am a vice-president of the English Speaking Union and I have been involved in establishing branches of that union in Russia, particularly in St Petersburg, and eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union. I am also a visiting professor at St Petersburg State University, which, as many noble Lords will know, is Vladimir Putin’s alma mater.
I must say that I am not entirely persuaded about the popularity of Mr Putin. I know what the opinion polls say and I know about his control of the media, which reflects that judgment. However, from my own conversations, particularly with people in St Petersburg, there is deep unease among many in Russia over what is happening. Also, there is occasional derision towards Putin’s position. The ludicrous assertion that the level of voting in the Scottish referendum was North Korean was greeted with embarrassment and derision by many people I know in Russia. We should be realistic.
I was somewhat shocked by the assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, that we were in danger of—I think I have got the words right—picking a fight with Russia over Ukraine. May I remind the House that it is President Putin who has picked a fight with democratic principles and international law over Ukraine? It is not the West that has picked a fight with him. I hope that, in her reply to this debate, the Minister will reassert that. There is a very important issue of principle involved.
Because of ISIS and its present command of the headlines, the ambitions and, indeed, the ambiguities of Vladimir Putin are somewhat misunderstood and ignored. However, his activity, particularly in east Ukraine, is destabilising for very specific reasons. I shall focus on just two aspects of this destabilisation.
The first is the economic dimension. Reference has been made to the impact of western sanctions on Russia and we all know about the West’s dependence—which, at 40%, is still considerable—on Russian oil and gas. Let us look at the impact of western sanctions. It is a very complicated picture. The Russians have self-inflicted much of the impact of these sanctions. They have, for example, forbidden agricultural imports across a very wide range of products from the United States, the European Union and Norway. The result is that there are now shortages of important foods in the shops in many Russian cities and prices have risen dramatically. That is a self-imposed impact. The fourth tier of sanctions has also significantly impacted on access to capital and investment, particularly for smaller entrepreneurial companies in Russia.
At a lecture in St Petersburg, I was once asked: what is the basic economic relationship that Russia should look for with the West? I replied that to benefit trade you must have reciprocity. It has to be a two-way street. One of the problems is that the Putin Administration has viewed it as a one-way street. It has been about using the power of oil and gas—the so-called nuclear weapon—to gain what he wants. What will happen about that? There have been references, rightly, to the fall in the oil price. That has happened for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is the impact of shale in the United States. But let us not underestimate the almost total dependence of the Russian economy on oil and gas. If this fall continues it will, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, indicated in his speech, have a very dramatic effect on Russia.
What are we doing to lessen our dependence on oil and gas from Russia? There is a lot of infrastructure investment. In particular, the new pipeline going through Albania is going to be of considerable significance. Albania, incidentally, now has candidate status. It is hoped that its President will visit this country before the end of the year, and I think that we have to really stretch out a hand in that relationship.
I end by looking at the relationship between EU enlargement and this whole issue. When Helmut Kohl, as German Chancellor, negotiated with Mr Gorbachev, he indicated to the Russians that we would not allow a situation where NATO and the EU reached the borders of Russia. I think that that was prudent and right, and we should not entertain the idea of Ukraine joining NATO. However, that is not to say that we should allow a situation in which permanent destabilisation of eastern Ukraine is permitted. Therefore, I think that we must remain committed to EU enlargement where that is applicable but, above all, we must maintain the present levels of sanctions until there is a significant change, and we may not have to wait too long.
We used to talk about an EU-Russian agreement. That may now seem a very distant prospect, but the fact that it is distant should not in any way reduce our commitment to trying to achieve it. However, to achieve it, we have to be realistic, not optimistic, about Mr Putin and contemporary Russia.
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, this is not so much a declaration of interest as a declaration of pride. I worked with the late Lord Jenkins when he was President of the European Commission, its only British President to date, and during that period I was enormously impressed by the professionalism and effectiveness of the UK Permanent Representation in Brussels—the so-called UKRep. As many of us know, at the end of last year Sir Robin Butler passed away. He was an outstanding civil servant who worked within UKRep as well.
Noble Lords
Lord Watson of Richmond
Sir Michael Butler; I am so sorry. Sir Robin Butler—the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell—is still here. Sir Michael was closely involved in the negotiations that led to the rebate.
If you look at the track record of British membership of the European Union in its various stages of evolution, you see that UKRep has been remarkably effective. I absolutely do not accept the inherent pessimism and lack of self-confidence that we keep hearing that somehow we are fated to lose every argument that we join. The track record of this country in the EU simply does not bear that out.
One of the reasons why what is proposed in the Bill is in many ways a dangerous course is that it weakens the diplomatic power and effectiveness of this country in its negotiating position in Brussels. We should not make the mistake of believing that there is an indefinite tolerance among other member states of the British position on this. The results of a poll published last week stated that only 16% of Germans and 26% of French believed that they would favour a special deal for the United Kingdom. Whenever these negotiations take place, they are not going to be a pushover; they will be really difficult, and we will have to persuade our colleagues in Europe that it is clearly in their interests to participate in them and to progress with further reform.
In that, incidentally, the position of Germany is particularly important. The Germans have gone a long way, as they did over the rebate, to give support to British positions, but if you say to the German Government, “Well, here it is, we’d like your full support and if you do not give it to us we’re going to press the button and we may be out”, what is the end result of that attitudinal position?
If there is a threat, certainly implicit, to our diplomatic effectiveness as a result of committing ourselves to an “in and out” referendum in this Parliament to bind the next, what is the likely effect on our economic and industrial strength? Many of the figures have already been rehearsed in this debate, but one struck me the other day that I had not picked up on before: one-half of all non-EU companies operating now in Europe are headquartered in the UK. That is a far greater proportion in total than those headquartered in either Germany or France. Do we really believe that those companies would continue to be headquartered here were we to exit from the EU? I very much doubt it. Goldman Sachs, Hyundai, Toyota, Siemens and so on—the list is endless and I assure the House that it will get longer and more strident as this debate continues.
The noble Lord, Lord Garel-Jones, was quite right to say in this debate that were the referendum to result in an out vote, it would not be the end of anything; rather, it would be the beginning of an extraordinarily difficult, painful and protracted process. That is why I am glad that my own party, in its own commitment on a referendum, has been very specific, not generic. We are committed to an “in or out” referendum the next time that there is a significant transfer of power from the UK to the EU. That is a specific commitment.
I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said in his fine speech at the beginning of the debate that if there is a fundamental change in our relationship with Europe, in many cases the reality is that the statutory power to have such a referendum already exists, so the Bill is unnecessary.
I find that the proposer of the Bill has made a very odd argument. If I have understood it right, and he also said it on Radio 4 this morning, the reason for this referendum now is that no one in the UK under the age of 60 has had a chance to vote on EU membership. If you think about other vital elements of our constitutional and societal arrangements in this country, in many cases no one alive today has ever voted on them either. Have we voted on the Hanoverian succession? Have we voted on the monarchy? Do we need to do both in order to legitimise the present position? I do not seriously think that anyone would propose that in this House.
We are engaged in something which is inherently foolish and significantly risky. If our main concern is about how we are viewed by the British people, I think the expectation of the British people is that this House does the job that it has been given, which is to review legislation and to do it with integrity, honesty and thoroughness.
United Kingdom and China
Lord Watson of Richmond Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, I too join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, for instigating this debate and congratulating my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe on her excellent maiden speech. I am sure that we shall hear more from her as the months go by. She and I shared a fascinating visit to Beijing in 2010 to look at the rapid changes in retailing in that city. For me it was also a huge contrast with my first visit to Beijing in 1977, a year after Mao Tse-Tung’s death and a year before Deng Xiaoping’s return. It was then, of course, a city of bicycles; it is now one of traffic jams brightened by a profusion of pink Rolls-Royces.
Any attempt to evaluate recent developments in our relationship with China requires perspective. The best any of us can do in a short debate is to share relevant experience and any particular insight that such experience may have given us. Mine centres on the contradiction in China between extraordinarily rapid economic growth and change and the continuity of monopolistic political power and the impact of this contradiction on our relationship.
As has already been pointed out, we are having this debate two days before the third plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the first for the party chief and State President. There is much speculation that this could bring about a change as radical as that brought about by Deng back in 1978. My second visit to Beijing was in that year. Even then, as a foreigner, you felt the force, like a second earthquake, of impending change. Twelve months earlier I had been restricted to the Hotel of Foreign Nationalities, with its shop selling only the little red book and admiring accounts of Red Guards who had done the right thing by denouncing their parents. The year 1978 was all about change, with China opening its relationship with us and with the rest of the West, and life flowing into new channels of entrepreneurialism and trade. That year changed our relationship. Will 2013 do the same?
China is in the forward planning and investment programmes of virtually every major business in the western world. Countries compete frantically to sell to China and to attract investment from China. Boris Johnson and George Osborne outdo each other—and outdid each other—as super-salesmen. Some, of course, urge us to shed all restraint and become a new generation of buccaneers. Many people advocating such a course believe that we would do far better in China unfettered by the European Union—conveniently ignoring the fact that Germany, at the very heart of the EU, sells four times the value of goods and trade to China than we do.
Whether singly or as the EU, we all know that recovery from recession turns critically on what happens next in China. Here we face the contradiction with which I began: amazing change on the one hand, and the continuity of communist power on the other. It is that contradiction that will challenge the third plenum, taking place behind closed doors this weekend.
Will Hutton, writing in the Observer after George Osborne’s visit, dubbed him, uncharitably and unfairly, “Bambi in Beijing”—allegedly because he had ignored the obstinacy of Communist power and the determination of the party to retain it. No doubt that determination does exist, but it is shot through with contradictory pressures. There are the aspirations of an urban population of 665 million, many in the 129 Chinese cities with populations of more than 1 million people. There are the great disparities of wealth between those still stranded on the land—or, indeed, dispossessed by urban development—or trapped as what must be described as sweated labour in so many regimented factories. There is the urgent need to liberalise the economy and break up state monopolies if consumer spending is to soar, as it must, as the domestic economy becomes China’s key source of growth. There is the imperative to do this as China’s export advantage of low production costs erodes. Above all, there is the tension between economic liberalism and political control.
The Foreign Office Minister believes that,
“political reform and economic reform come hand in hand”.
If they do not, failure could foster a catastrophic shift in the tectonic plates beneath China’s surface. In the other place, the Prime Minister assured us that the UK will stand firm on human rights. It would be good to hear the Minister confirm that there was no apology from the Prime Minister for the Dalai Lama’s visit to London and his meeting with him. Human rights and political reforms are, in the end, the only way to sustain and grow the prosperity of China. So old and deeply talented a civilisation has the ability to resolve these contradictions, and it is our hope—and our interest—that it does so.
Let me end on a personal note. In the north-eastern city of Shenyang my late mother-in-law, a brilliant German businesswoman, Erica Lederer, began to manufacture decorative goods for the German market very shortly after the cultural revolution. She admired the people, their skills, their competitiveness and their friendship. At the centre of Shenyang stands perhaps the biggest statue of Mao Tse-Tung in the whole of China. Under his granite feet the talent and aspirations of ordinary Chinese people were even then, in that first year after the cultural revolution, beginning to shift the ground, and are doing it so much more so today.