China

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in making my brief contribution. I thank her for her initiative in bringing this debate to us and for setting out the issues so well.

I am a patron of Hong Kong Watch and a vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Hong Kong and Uighurs. My family and I have been sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2019, I was part of the international team that monitored the last free and fair elections in Hong Kong. Earlier today during Question Time, I highlighted the fate of some of the legislators and pro-democracy activists whom I met. Some, such as British citizen Jimmy Lai, whom I know, are among the 1,200 incarcerated in Hong Kong jails. Others are among the exiles, such as Nathan Law, who is resident in the United Kingdom. On each of their heads a bounty of 1 million Hong Kong dollars has been placed. Their only crime is to believe in democracy.

The Chinese Communist Party has suppressed every last vestige of democracy, free speech and the rule of law, turning its courts into a mere tool of the CCP in implementing the draconian national security law. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, who said last night that those remaining British judges lending respectability to the CCP’s courts should search their consciences.

By contrast, the admirable, courageous heroism of the defenders of Hong Kong’s freedoms is of a piece with the protestors who were massacred in Tiananmen Square in April 1989. Who can forget the solitary defiance of “Tank Man”, who stood in the square in front of a CCP tank? Such individual acts inspire and keep alive the hope that, as in Berlin in November 1989, even the most solid-looking walls can be brought down.

My friend Bob Fu was among the protestors who survived the massacre and subsequently escaped. He says:

“It was really absolutely shock because we had never imagined, by sitting in the peaceful Tiananmen Square—which, translated literally, is Square of Heavenly Peace—our so-called people’s government would send the so-called People’s Liberation Army to shoot its own people”.


Until July 2020, Hong Kong was one of the remaining cities in China where, as we heard, people were free to publicly commemorate Tiananmen and to honour the lives of those who were murdered at the hands of the CCP. For organising the candle-lit vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, activists such as the lawyer Chow Hang-tung are now behind bars facing the prospect of many years in prison under the national security law.

All this is of a piece. The silencing of British parliamentarians, exiled legislators and activists all demonstrates that the CCP is literally scared stiff of dissent. That is why they are using bounties, arrest warrants and threats of extradition to close down debate. It is why they try to remove all references to Tiananmen and to censor schoolbooks and the internet. Add to this the way in which the CCP tries to extend its long arm to reach overseas and threaten the well-being and safety of pro-democracy activists who are under the protection of the UK Government, and it is pretty clear what kind of authoritarian regime we are dealing with.

I include in that number the significant BNO community and students at universities such as Southampton, who were recently set upon by CCP thugs. I remind the Minister of the attack on peaceful protestors outside the consulate in Manchester, by consular officials. As I noted in my remarks during our defence debate last Friday, disappointingly, the United Kingdom Government continue to send the CCP very mixed messages when it comes to the value that I know the Minister places on human rights and the international treaty guarantees that supposedly uphold Hong Kong’s autonomy, which the CCP has trashed.

The genius of “one country, two systems” has been replaced by the totalitarian model of “one system, one party”. Is it any surprise that the CCP thinks it can get away with this, and with encouraging the illegal use of bounty-hunters on UK soil and threatening the safety of British overseas nationals, when, for instance, we continue to drag our feet on stripping out a million Chinese-made surveillance cameras from government departments and the public sector supply chain? Does Xi Jinping take the UK seriously when, after three years of a relentless and unprecedented crackdown in Hong Kong, the Foreign Secretary is chomping at the bit to visit Beijing to sign investment and trade agreements with China—a country with which we have a trade deficit of over £40 billion? So much for promoting national resilience and less dependency.

Does the Minister believe that it is licit to do business as usual with a country credibly accused by the House of Commons and President Biden, among others, of committing genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang? If not, why was a Minister from this House sent to Hong Kong to deepen trade deals? Can we really claim that we take national security seriously when so many of our academic research institutions continue to pursue sensitive research partnerships on dual-use technology with Chinese universities with links to the People’s Liberation Army?

Ministers and officials are responsible for the safety of our citizens at home and our international treaty responsibilities overseas, but in two reports from our House of Lords International Relations and Defence Select Committee we concluded that British policy represents “a strategic void”. When it comes to keeping its word on these issues, you cannot believe a word that the Chinese Communist Party and its chairman Xi Jinping say. Tiananmen, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan all reinforce that message.