China

Debate between Christina Rees and Stewart Malcolm McDonald

Wednesday 15th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I am grateful for that guidance, Ms Rees. You will find no attempt at Mandarin, Welsh or anything else in my remarks this afternoon. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing the debate. He is a good friend with whom I was privileged to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The only thing wrong is that we do not have longer or, indeed, more hon. Members taking part. We would not know from the acres of empty green seats that surround us that this is the defining challenge of our time, which is too often thought of as a complicated and faraway foreign policy issue, when in actual fact the challenge of China is where domestic and foreign policy are so intertwined.

This is an issue of foreign policy and of domestic policy that manifests itself in many different policy areas and it is of concern to people up and down the UK, whether in Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Edinburgh, Cardiff, London, the Isle of Wight or wherever. It is indeed a domestic issue as much as a foreign policy issue. The nature of the challenge that China presents manifests itself right across a whole sphere of policy areas, many of which have been mentioned. It is an economic challenge, a security challenge and a technology challenge. It is a challenge to our democratic values, our open society and way of life, our energy security and our national resilience.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight described too much of the Government’s approach as “piecemeal”, and I believe we would be wrong to try to compartmentalise any response to that challenge into individual policy areas. The challenge that China presents us with is so complex that I do not believe it can ever really be won or lost; it needs to be constantly revisited.

Notwithstanding what was said by the hon. Member for Bolton North East (Mark Logan), could anyone imagine our having this debate 12 to 15 years ago, at the height of the so-called golden era of relations? I rather think not. China will constantly evolve and produce new challenges. There will also be new opportunities and a whole tonne—a whole series—of contradictions in between. The pace of change we have seen since the golden era speaks to that.

I want to do something that Members will expect me to do: the Scotland bit of the debate, or indeed the devolution bit. It is good to have a Welsh Member of Parliament in the Chair, Ms Rees, and you will, I am sure, well understand some of these remarks. Devolution is well understood in Beijing, probably better understood than it is by most Members of this House. My goodness, do they have a strategy to deal with the fact that huge swathes of financial and legislative power sit not here in London but in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Do the UK Government or any of the devolved Governments have a strategy to deal with that? No, none of them do.

I want to focus on three Es: exports, education and energy. If we do the good bit first, as far as Scotland is concerned that is exports. Scotland’s exports to China stand at about £800 million, the exact same as our exports to Norway and Singapore. It is a relatively healthy position for Scotland to be in. That figure is from 2023, the year of the integrated review refresh in which China is written up as an “epoch-defining challenge” and the year of the major speech from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calling on countries to de-risk their exports to China. I would argue that Scotland is already in that place and has a healthy level of exports.

When it comes to education and energy, there is a massive risk surface that no Government of any stripe should be content with. The risk of universities being dependent on Chinese funding is far higher in Scottish universities than in universities anywhere else in the UK. Bear in mind, education is entirely devolved. No Minister across the road can do a single thing about education policy in Scotland. The University of Glasgow gets 42% of its fee income from students from China. It would be a problem if 42% of the fee income came from students from France, but we are dealing with a very different issue with China. That is not to say that Chinese students are not welcome in the University of Glasgow or in universities anywhere else across the UK, because they absolutely are, but why have we allowed these fine institutions of higher education to create massive surfaces of risk that would not stand the test of any kind of geopolitical shock—a shock in the strait of Taiwan, for example?

In February of this year, the Scottish Government produced their international education strategy, which says that they wish to diversify the “international student population”. There is at least an understanding that there is an issue and a problem. What there is not, I am sorry to say, is a strategy to turn that around. There is no strategy of working with higher education institutes, industry and others to globalise the international student population that exists in Scotland.

If we look at research funding, £12 million has flown into UK universities from bodies with links to, for example, the repression of Uyghurs, espionage, cyber-hacking and much else. The Government know about that problem, but they dare not speak about it, never mind have a strategy to deal with it.

Then there is energy. I am sure that the Deputy Foreign Secretary will know about my recent problems, for example, with Minyang Smart Energy building the largest European turbine manufacturing project in Scotland. How on earth is it in the UK or Scotland’s interests to put such a critical part of our national energy infrastructure into the hands of an entity from a hostile foreign power just weeks after the Norwegian Government declined the same entity, and in the same month that the European Commission started its anti-trust investigation into unfair competition practices by Chinese turbine manufacturers?

To summarise, the point I make to the Deputy Foreign Secretary this afternoon is that devolution is a back door for hostile foreign states. That is well understood in the Chinese consulates in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. I am not looking for Ministers in London to override anybody in the other capitals of the UK. I want a joined-up strategy between devolved Government and state-level Government to help us de-risk key parts of our economy and infrastructure and ensure that we are not overly dependent on a foreign power that is hostile to our values and way of life, and certainly does not have our national interests in mind as far as energy security, education or much else are concerned. My appeal to the Deputy Foreign Secretary is to understand that and work with Ministers in Edinburgh and elsewhere to start to unpick those dependencies, diversify our institutions and ensure that the risk is being driven down.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I will call the Opposition spokespersons at 3.28 pm.