China

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

I congratulate my noble friend on his prescience because there have been two unprecedented events recently, one of which was the reference to the threat from China in the NATO strategic concept set out in Madrid and the other was the similarly unprecedented appeal by the FBI and our own MI5. This puts us on guard. There has been a certain naivety in our attitude to China in the past—I think of George Osborne’s view of China’s “golden era” in 2015. Since that time when agreements were made, there have been the threats and takeover in Hong Kong, the situation with the Uighurs, which has already been mentioned, and the general threats of Chinese malign activity that have been revealed. Surely a wake-up process is now under way.

This sadly comes at a time when much of our attention has been focused on the attack on Ukraine. We hope that President Xi will perhaps see the robust response in terms of sanctions and feed that into his own calculations on Taiwan.

That said, we must recognise that there is a certain professional deformation in the response of our securocrats in the FBI and MI5. There is a much broader canvas in terms of China; this was recognised in the integrated review, of which I commend page 26 to your Lordships. The IRDC report, which my noble friend referred to, called for a “coherent strategy” regarding China.

In terms of understanding China, I think, for example, of our response in the early 1960s to Russia, when we had the Hayter report on an increased focus in our universities. Of course, it is not only in terms of industry, but also in our universities, where we must look at the China question. We know, for example, that there are now 144,000 Chinese students in the UK—a 50% increase in five years—and they are studying applied science, not chorus endings from Euripides. In short, yes, we need vigilance, but we also need balance and a better understanding of the middle kingdom—China. President Johnson once said of another relationship, “Keep your hand out, but your guard up”. I know this is a difficult posture, but I would commend it to your Lordships.