AUKUS: Impact on Anglo-Chinese Relations

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage hon. Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with current Government and House of Commons Commission guidance. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering or leaving the room. Daniel Kawczynski will move the motion.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of the AUKUS pact on Anglo-Chinese relations.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am pleased to have secured this debate on AUKUS, the new British naval alliance with Australia and the United States, which will play a pivotal role in maintaining peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region.

There is no doubt in my mind that both Russia and China are threats to the United Kingdom. Make no mistake: Russia and China are both grave threats to freedom, to the western world in particular and to true democracy in general. The discussion is not about whether they are a threat but about the type of threat they present and the degree to which they endanger us.

Russia’s threat is predominantly cyber, but China’s threat is much larger: it is multidimensional, complex, far reaching and interconnected. China’s threat is based in economics and logistics, including manufacturing, supply chain and minerals. We have spent 18 months suffering the reality of that, and we must now recalibrate our investment and trade policy in order not to be so over-dependent on China in the future.

I started asking questions of our own Government about the situation in the South China sea on 4 January 2016—nearly six years ago. I asked the Foreign Office—the then Foreign Secretary was Mr Hammond—and the reply came from Hugo Swire. I asked what the United Kingdom Government’s attitude was on the situation in the South China sea. This is the first time in my 16-year career that I pay tribute to the BBC, but having watched a BBC documentary on the situation in the South China sea, which very clearly highlighted the extraordinary situation in which China is stealing hundreds of atolls from neighbouring countries, pouring concrete on them and turning them into giant military installations, I asked the British Government what their view was. The answer came back:

“The UK takes no position on the sovereignty of the Spratly Islands or other disputed features in the South China Sea.”

That was a serious mistake by the Conservative Government at that time.

Under Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, we had a policy of maximum engagement with China in order to safeguard and protect the massive, multibillion pound investments that it was pouring into our country—conveniently overlooking the growing and increasing human rights abuses that were taking place in China and China’s nefarious conduct in the region.

Of course, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we expect China to be a strong country, to have a strong military and to have a capability sufficient to defend her national interests. However, during the course of the debate, I will share with hon. Members the extent of China’s recent hostile activities towards her smaller, more vulnerable neighbours—activities that go beyond those UN Security Council responsibilities. China is starting to look like a large regional power attempting to bully and subjugate its neighbours. Who are those countries? Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. Remember those names and the significance of those countries to the United Kingdom, not only historically but from a trading perspective today—Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia.

As I have outlined, China has stolen hundreds of those atolls from each of those four nations, pouring concrete on to them, turning them into military outposts and trying to take control of the whole South China sea. Just think about the significance of that statement. We rightly admonish Russia about what it is doing in the Kerch strait, restricting the access of Ukrainian ships to the sea of Azov. That is a walk in the park compared with what is going on in the South China sea.

Let us not forget that 60% of global maritime trade goes through the South China sea—$5.3 trillion of trade passes through that waterway. China is attempting to take control of all of it and to restrict the movement of international shipping in order for China to have the confidence of stretching its empire that much further south, so being able to control the region that much better.

I pay tribute to our own Navy, which has been at the very forefront of pursuing freedom-of-navigation exercises through the South China sea. I dread to think what would have happened by now had the United Kingdom had not taken such a pivotal role in ensuring that our ships were at the forefront of protecting the right of passage through that waterway.

I want to come on to outline why I am concerned about China. Some people might accuse me of being anti-Chinese or slightly hysterical about the threat emanating from China, but let me give some evidence for why I think that China is becoming an increasing threat. I have already been warned by various Chinese publications here in the United Kingdom that I am on a watch list and that if I continue to speak out and scrutinise Anglo-Chinese relations, I will be the next Tory MP to be put on China’s sanctions list. If so, I will scrutinise China even more, because—I want the Chinese ambassador to know this—the British way is not to be bullied and intimidated.

We are all British parliamentarians, and we have a duty and responsibility in this House to challenge our own Government and our Government’s policy towards China in a sensible, pragmatic and democratic way. If this debate pushed me into being sanctioned, I for one will not relent from that ongoing scrutiny of my own Government and their conduct towards China.

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[Daniel Kawczynski]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, I was being rather contrite and measured in referring to the policy as ethnic cleansing. He is of course correct, and I will utilise his word: what is going on in western China is genocide.

I will repeat what our Government, the Prime Minister and others have said. I saw something in the media this week. The Prime Minister said we must not discount Chinese investment in our country. I understand we are in a precarious economic situation. I understand that it is tempting to accept tens or hundreds of billions of dollars from China, but, as I will come on to say, China has a 1,000-year strategy to control global economies, and we must not fall into the trap.

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend. I am old enough to remember the agreement that Margaret Thatcher signed in December 1984. In that meticulous agreement that we entered into with the Chinese, my understanding is that we did not have to give up all the territory, but we did it for one country, two systems, and China has completely trashed that agreement—not after 100 or 200 years, but just a few short decades—and it has been put in the bin. The most heartbreaking thing that I heard the other day was a young man from Hong Kong who said to me, “We have come to expect and we have acclimatised ourselves to smelling tear gas on our streets on a daily basis.” The Chinese intend to do everything possible to snuff out and destroy the embryonic stages of a democratic movement in Hong Kong. Yes, we have a responsibility to the Uyghurs and to our other partners in the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, which we will be joining, but—goodness me—we have no greater responsibility to anybody in that region than we do to the people of Hong Kong who have stood with us and fought with us for generations.

If an MP has the temerity to challenge the dangerous conduct of China, they will, as I have said, be put on a sanctions list. I am extremely pleased that Mr Speaker has now banned the Chinese ambassador from entering this House. It is extraordinary that the ambassador from a fellow permanent member of the United Nations Security Council cannot step into this building. I applaud the courage and bravery of our Speaker. It is intolerable for us to allow the Chinese ambassador into this building while hon. Friends such as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is put on the sanctions list and is threatened, bullied and intimidated. What signal would we send to the Chinese if we allowed the Chinese ambassador to come here and enjoy our receptions and debates, and have the privilege of being able to lobby Members of Parliament, when our own colleagues are being sanctioned?

I now come to AUKUS, which is the purpose of this debate.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Finally.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Well, I am a politician, Mr Davies. You have to give me some leeway to give you a brief synopsis up front. Thank you for your patient indulgence.

With regard to AUKUS, we need to celebrate. I am having this debate because I want to send a copy of it to all of my members in Shrewsbury. I rang my association chairman—we have about 500 members in the Shrewsbury Conservative Association—and I have asked for a copy to be sent to all of my members because I think we ought to celebrate the signing of AUKUS. It is extraordinary how little coverage it has received in the press and that the United Kingdom is the only European country that has been asked to join this extraordinary military-naval pact with America and the United States of America.

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[Daniel Kawczynski]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Not surprisingly, I completely concur with everything he has just stated. I would also say to him that in addition to the treaty—the Minister will know about this—we gave Mauritius £4 million as final settlement. Hon. Members will remember how much £4 million was in 1965. Mauritius took that money. Now, 50 years on, Mauritius is trying to overturn—

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. Please can we bring it back to AUKUS? Also, we will have to begin to time-limit the few people we have to speak.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Sorry, forgive me—I had to get in the British Indian Ocean Territory, because I would argue that it is a critical part of the AUKUS strategy.

My final comment is an appeal to the Minister, which I have briefed her officials about. When she replies to me to say that we will never give up the British Indian Ocean Territory until we no longer have a military requirement for these islands, may I ask her to change her view? It should never be the case that we will hand these islands back, even in the very rare circumstances that there is no further military requirement for them. They are part and parcel of, and intrinsic to, our long-term strategy of AUKUS and bringing Britain back into the Indo-Pacific, to ensure that we use our position on the UN Security Council and our military might to help our new economic partners in the CPTPP and beyond to maintain peace and stability in this crucial part of the world.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I think we have three Members who wish to speak, who by my reckoning each have about eight or nine minutes each to speak, before 10.28 am.

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[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Davies, for allowing me to take part in this debate. I would like to thank the Minister; she and I have not always agreed on everything, but we have moved on, and I am glad to see her here. I give sincere congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski); his was one of the highest-quality speeches that I have heard in this Chamber. This is an incredibly important debate, and I am sorry that it is so thinly attended.

You have given me about six minutes, Mr Davies, so I will motor on, but I want to make one or two important points that were not in my speech, but that arise from what my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said. Perhaps the most important thing he said was that now that we have freed ourselves from the straitjacket of European Union trading arrangements, we need to participate fully in the Indo-Pacific tilt and its trading arrangements. He is quite right that it is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. It is certainly growing much faster than the European Union, which is, if anything, retrenching in terms of percentage of world GDP; he is 100% right on that. I hope we succeed in our CPTPP negotiations. He is also 100% right to talk about naval bases. Ironically, that is exactly what the Chinese are doing; they are expanding their naval bases those in Sri Lanka and Djibouti being just two examples. China is doing exactly what he urges us to do. At Diego Garcia and Guam there are two very significant American bases, which will be maintained at full strength.

My hon. Friend is also right to say that we should reduce our dependency on Chinese investment in this country. Unprecedentedly in my 29-year parliamentary career, I have called for an urgent question. It is on the Chinese purchase of Newport Wafer Fab. It makes our highly sophisticated microchips, which are extremely difficult to make; we have some of the world’s best technology, and we are selling it to the Chinese. These microchips are the basis of every piece of electronic equipment. It was crazy to allow this, and I still appeal to the Minister to look at this again, because it was not very sensible.

I have been actively engaged with members of the Chinese Government at the most senior levels for the last 20 years or so. I am also deputy chairman of the all-party parliamentary China group, so I can claim to have some insight into the Chinese psychology. What one really needs to look into is: what is the psychology driving China when it takes an action? How will it react to this trilateral security pact? Since 2010, the relationship between the UK and China has been pragmatic and often mutually beneficial. For example, the UK was the first western nation to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It is still one of the largest foreign countries trading renminbi. I think we have to be pragmatic. I do not think we should cut off our trade with China; I just think we should diversify it.

I totally agree with Members who have mentioned the serious human rights violations in China, which we in the UK abhor and rightly express our concerns about directly with China. That does not mean that we should not be friends with the Chinese on a people-to-people level; nor should it prevent our Governments from having responsible dialogue. China is too big and strategically important not to engage with. The message I want to leave this House with is that if we stop engaging with China, we stop having any influence with it. It is absolutely essential to engage, and we have done throughout history. We have engaged with people whom we do not like and do not approve of. We do not approve of their human rights violations, but we still engage with them. That is what we ought to be doing with the Chinese.

The People’s Republic is extremely strategic and long-term in its thinking—as my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said, it has a 1,000-year strategy. When it sets out to achieve something, it invariably does. I would like my hon. Friend to focus on this line: while it might protest about AUKUS publicly, privately it will respect the fact that the west is standing up to its imperial ambitions. There is no doubt that China wants to become the dominant superpower in the world in regards to political, economic and military influence. We must accept that, but that does not mean we should stop dealing with it. We need to find a sensible way to work with China.

The Chinese are spending huge amounts of money on upgrading their submarine, space and ballistic missile capabilities. According to the Financial Times, in August they tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, apparently to the surprise of the US and western intelligence. Why it was a surprise, I do not know, because we have known for several years that they have been trying to develop these weapons. Such demonstrations show the advanced capabilities of China’s modernised military.

We have witnessed the deterioration in Australian-Chinese relations and the bullying attitude to Australia over trade, which, of course, has spurred Australia on to spend a significant amount of its GDP upgrading its submarine capability to a nuclear-powered capability, so that it can spend more time at sea, hopefully undetected.

I fully welcome the AUKUS pact. I think it is the right thing to do. Hopefully, the UK as well as the US will take part in the production and technology of those submarines. AUKUS has been, to many, a bold step. We are pushing our global Britain credentials with a bigger role in the Indo-Pacific region. Importantly, as my hon. Friend says, we are working closely with our allies—something talked about in the integrated review. He mentioned the number of countries in the CPTPP partnership. One important country he did not mention, and which I would like to mention on the record, is South Korea. We have a trading agreement, and a good relationship, with it. It is one of those countries north of the South China sea that is also troubled by Chinese incursion.

There are still many areas that require productive and sensible China-Anglo dialogue. COP26 is an important milestone for the future of the UK’s climate change agenda and ambition. The UK produces around 1.1% of the world’s emissions, whereas China emits around 28% and accounts for almost two thirds of the growth in emissions since 2000. Clearly, we can set a good example to other countries to decarbonise more quickly and make a real difference to climate change, but we need alliances with other countries, so that they can do the same. We need China to come on board with that agenda. Any fallout over AUKUS will have consequences for other matters, as I have demonstrated with COP26, but I would like to think that it is of benefit to both the UK and China to continue with a constructive dialogue.

While we will always have our differences, and I do not hesitate to articulate our views vociferously to the Chinese when I talk to them, particularly over human rights, overall it is in both sides’ interests to have a realistic but frank dialogue in the future. The idea of breaking off all dialogue with China, as some would advocate, is simply cutting off our nose to spite our face. Worse still, as I have said, we would lose the chance to influence Chinese thinking on issues such as climate change.

This has been an important debate. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to take something from it: that while we want to stand up to China, we want to have a dialogue with it; that its human rights activities are unacceptable; and that we should start to reduce our reliance on Chinese investment.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I will call the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.28 am, so Mark Logan has just under eight minutes.

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[Daniel Kawczynski]

I must pick the hon. Gentleman up on the important point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). Those submarines are powered by nuclear power; they do not have nuclear weapons on them. Bearing in mind that the hon. Gentleman said how strongly the SNP thinks about reducing carbon, surely it is more appropriate to have submarines powered by nuclear rather than diesel. Does he not understand that?

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Mr Hendry, could you begin to wind up your remarks?

[Drew Hendry]

I was going to before I took the intervention, Mr Davies. I will move as swiftly as I can towards the conclusion of my comments. The fact is that using nuclear power anywhere—on a submarine or elsewhere—means there is residual environmental waste that will go on for many half-lives. To have nuclear-powered submarines patrolling is not a solution to an environmental issue. That is a preposterous position.

The UK remains outside the Quad and the ongoing stately voyage of HMS Queen Elizabeth in the South China sea is more symbolic than substantive. The deployment has been noted for not carrying enough aircraft and for depending on US and Dutch escort vessels.

There are still questions to be answered about what the UK will get out of the partnership. The UK is clearly not going to be building the submarines after the mess it made of the latest Astute class hunter-killer boats that it cannot even scrap. That comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham. It cannot even scrap the nuclear subs that we see as rusting hulks left to degrade in the water at Rosyth.

There have been vague references to wider co-operation in areas such as artificial intelligence, but the only specific programmes mentioned, such as those to supply the Australians with Tomahawks, joint air-to-surface standoff missiles, and long-range anti-ship missiles, concern American weapons systems. Perhaps the Minister can detail what is actually agreed.

The French Foreign Minister has already suggested that the UK is just the fifth wheel on the carriage. More broadly, the main issue is what this co-operation will do. Will it impede China’s intentions in the regions? A little perhaps, but not significantly. There was not much in terms of strategic commitments. Instead, there were lots of theatrics, a statement of intent and a promise of new submarines in 20 years’ time. That is no substitute for a joined-up, long-term strategy, decided between the US, UK, the EU and other like-minded partners. China’s long-term challenge will not be met by submarines alone.

Finally, it is right to be concerned about the ability to engage China on climate change. It is still unclear whether Xi Jinping will attend COP26. It would be a great deficit if he were not there because of decisions made at Westminster. Planetary health cannot suffer as a result of this.

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[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, may I mention that David Amess was an esteemed member of the Panel of Chairs, who chaired these sorts of debates? He is sadly missed and fondly remembered by all members of the panel—by all of us as friends. I wanted to put that on the record.