FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Gapes. Your contribution to the Foreign Affairs Committee over the past 20 years has been truly exemplary, and indeed, your contribution to this report is one of the reasons why it was such a success. I am very glad that you are chairing this hearing.

Today, the Foreign Affairs Committee published its report on China and the rules-based international system. We worked on this inquiry for more than a year, including a trip to China to understand how the UK was seen from a Chinese perspective. As ever, we are very grateful to many people who submitted evidence to us, and especially to those who gave oral evidence, including the former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd.

China is seeking a role in the world commensurate with its growing economic power, and the UK should welcome its desire to take part in global governance. We do not believe that China wants to jeopardise the benefits that it has reaped from a stable, rules-based international system. However, it has consolidated power in the hands of the Communist party under President Xi, and the UK’s China strategy needs to reflect that. On many issues, China is a viable partner for the United Kingdom. The threat that environmental degradation, for example, poses to the Communist party’s legitimacy has led China to join international efforts on climate change and sustainability.

However, on other issues that China perceives as challenging its domestic control, such as global initiatives on human rights and free societies, it has opposed international approaches. It is appropriate that this statement follows one from the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, given how many of the concerns we considered overlap with that Committee’s work.

Indeed, in the area of human rights, the evidence suggests that China does not intend to reform the rules-based international system. Rather, it intends to subvert it by promoting an alternative version of human rights that stresses economic development at the cost of the universality of individual civil and political freedoms. In our report, we urge the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to increase its efforts to hold China to account for its human rights violations by using UN mechanisms, public statements and private diplomacy.

During the inquiry, we also heard troubling allegations of Chinese attempts to interfere in the UK’s domestic affairs. The openness of the UK’s political system and society is a fundamental source of our strength. However, in the face of an autocratic state seeking to increase its influence abroad, that openness can also be a source of vulnerability. The UK needs to decide how to draw the line between legitimate attempts to exercise influence and illegitimate attempts at interference. It is a topic that we on the Foreign Affairs Committee will be looking at further in our new inquiry into autocracies and UK foreign policy.

The Committee also noted its concern about the Chinese Government’s approach to Hong Kong. The Sino-British joint declaration on Hong Kong is a legally binding international treaty registered at the UN. It is of great importance to UK national interests and the health of the rules-based international system. China’s adherence to the letter and spirit of the declaration is a key test of the sincerity of its commitment to global governance. We were therefore deeply concerned by evidence that Hong Kong’s autonomy is at risk, especially in the area of the rule of law. We are concerned that the Chinese Government are moving away from an approach of “one country, two systems” towards “one country, one system”. We therefore urge the UK Government to continue to raise concerns about Hong Kong publicly and privately with the Hong Kong authorities.

We support the Government’s efforts to increase the UK’s presence in the Indo-Pacific—including its military presence—in line with its capacity and other defence commitments. The region is vital for global trade and home to a number of UK partners and allies. Communication about those efforts is crucial. Poorly communicated military deployments in the Indo-Pacific could be perceived or depicted by China as a crude attempt to contain the expansion of its influence.

The UK should focus instead on core principles, including freedom of navigation, the rights of states—including China’s neighbours—to form and maintain alliances of their choosing, and the importance of a balanced and consensual regional security order. We urge the Government to ensure that initiatives to expand the UK’s military presence in the Indo-Pacific are explained with reference to those principles.

China’s belt and road initiative—perhaps the most famous and well-known aspect of its foreign policy—is likely to have geopolitical effects that are as important as, and potentially more important than its economic impact. That Chinese-led investment in foreign countries, and in developing countries in particular, need not conflict with British interests. Asia’s infrastructure gap is real, and exporting the fruits of China’s spectacular growth could be a way to close that gap while addressing China’s own economic needs. The UK should help China with that. It can gain economic benefits from doing so, including by focusing on areas in which the UK has particular value to offer, such as legal and financial services.

However, in its current form, the belt and road initiative raises concerns in relation to UK interests. There is a risk that Chinese investment could encourage countries to strike deals that undermine international standards or that leave countries with unsustainable debt that undermines their political stability. The Government should take a strictly case-by-case approach to assessing belt and road projects and refrain from expressing a view on the initiative as a whole.

For the UK to come up with a comprehensive strategy to guide its relationship with China, it will need to answer some key questions. What are the drivers of Chinese foreign policy? What are the major goals of UK policy towards China? What is the bottom line of UK interests, values and national security considerations on which we are not prepared to compromise?

The UK’s approach to China reflects an unwillingness to face the reality of China’s strategic direction. Building a deeper partnership with China is still desirable, but we must recognise that there are hard limits to what co-operation can achieve and that the values and interests of the Chinese Communist party, and therefore the Chinese state, are often very different from those of the United Kingdom. In the report, we call for the Government to produce a single public document that defines its China strategy, crafted through a cross-Government process directed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That chimes with findings emerging from all the substantial inquiries we have undertaken.

The FCO has a diminished grip on our Government’s international strategy. It needs to reassert itself as the focal point for that strategy and regain some of its self-confidence and authority. Without a comprehensive approach, the UK risks prioritising economic considerations over its other interests, its values and national security. A constructive, positive UK relationship with China is possible and desirable, but it will require strategy, rigour and unity in place of hope and muddling through.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I, too, think it is a delight that you are in the Chair, Mr Gapes, although in a way it would be better if you were sitting down here, because I think your contribution would be useful. I commend the Committee on which I sit on our wonderful report. I think the Chairman has outlined the issues very well. How concerned is he that the British Government are a bit mealy mouthed sometimes when it comes to issues such as the Uighurs? More than 1 million people are in probably the largest concentration camp in the world, effectively being reschooled or re-educated—whatever we want to call it. Also, how worried is he by Italy’s recent deal with China? With that, we are beginning to see all the possible dangers of the belt and road initiative that he pointed to coming into the European Union.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his points. His contribution to the report was extremely important, as he knows. He raises two points that we looked at in various different ways. The Italian question came up at the end of the report process. On the question of the Uighurs, one of the things that came out strongly is that it is not simply a Chinese domestic issue. The repression of Muslim communities in western China will almost certainly have repercussions on other areas, including the UK and our allies in the region, as radicalism is likely to increase and further violence may follow from that.

As the hon. Gentleman will have heard, this is one of those moments when one must remember that one is looking at various forms of China. We are seeing the Chinese security state experimenting with its powers, particularly in Xinjiang. In some ways, one could say that modern China is an experiment. The challenge to which we do not know the answer is whether old men with tech can beat young people with ideas. So far, we do not know.

Italy’s deal with China is part of a long pattern that we have seen in Chinese foreign policy, which is to divide alliances and seek to break up groups. In this case, that is to split Italy from the rest of the European Union. It is interesting that when President Macron met President Xi only a few days after that deal was signed, he insisted on having Chancellor Merkel and President Tusk in the room at the same time to make the point that the European Union was still a united entity when dealing with Chinese trade. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the Italian decision to go on its own poses some important questions, not only for the European Union but for the United Kingdom.