China: Human Rights and Security

Lord Godson Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson (Con)]

As the last Back-Bench speaker of the year, I take pleasure in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on securing this debate and on the longevity of his interest in the subject and keeping the flag flying on this during very unpropitious circumstances, as it has been for the longest period. I thank him for his part in shifting the consensus in this House and beyond on the threat of the CCP and its institutions. It must have indeed seemed a lonely thing at times when the coalition was prioritising economic relations—and a short-term interpretation of economic relations, perhaps—above all other considerations.

I am not the only one who fears that we may be seeing a revival of aspects of the coalition’s approach to these matters in the policies of the current Government, or at least the early intimations thereof, prior to the publication of the audit and other reviews. One fears also a certain strategic incoherence in those early intimations. As I say, this partly is connected with its prioritisation of economic growth over all else. The danger is that we are trading tomorrow’s resilience and straining our alliances for short-term trade with the Chinese currency today—a kind of Back to the Future approach that many of us had hoped we had seen the back of.

Our allies seem to understand much more clearly than us that it is a fool’s game to separate economic and security relationships with Beijing. President Xi has collapsed the distinction between those two matters, viewing trade relations as entirely integral to the Chinese grand strategy. Pandering to Beijing is not necessary for maintaining economic relations. On the contrary, UK-China trade in the post-golden era has increased by 20% each year, even as successive Conservative Governments openly criticised Beijing for its transgressions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong—not often enough, perhaps, but, none the less, it has not sunk our trade with China.

Can this Government therefore be certain that kowtowing to Beijing will result in the flow of inward investment which they so crave? The Prime Minister, rightly, must engage with President Xi, as he did at the G20 summit, but should a growing list of Secretaries of State rush to Beijing now before the publication of the forthcoming China audit? Too often it appears that No. 10’s rationale is to front-load the cosmetic quick wins above everything else.

This confusion is compounded by the Government’s flurry of reviews: there are seven by my count, all of which should have a considerable China component. We have the China audit, of course; the FCDO’s three reviews, of the UK’s global impact, of development diplomacy and of economic diplomacy; the strategic defence review, to which noble Lord, Lord Alton, has already referred; the AUKUS review; and the Treasury’s own spending review. Are these linked together by a core strategic diagnosis of China? Who is now responsible for this? We seem in some ways to have disintegrated our national security approach, with multiple reviews reflecting different departmental agendas, absent a guiding hand to ensure coherence.

Before July, as my noble friend Lord Ahmad and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, pointed out, the UK pursued a China policy of align, protect and engage. It also pursued a policy of aligning with the China policies of our allies; protecting ourselves from espionage, economic malpractice and coercion; and engaging where prudent. This hierarchy of priorities was in keeping with the 2023 refresh of the integrated review, which assessed that China was

“an epoch-defining and systemic challenge”.

The current Government, now, at least—as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and others have noted—apparently favour a three-Cs approach: co-operate where possible, compete where important and challenge where necessary. However, this is not a strategy but a statement, absent the necessary prioritisation vis-à-vis Beijing.

Most worryingly, the Government’s three Cs no longer refer to alignment with partners. We are thus at risk of becoming out of kilter with the Chinese policies of our allies. This was one of the major gaps that the last Government rightly sought to correct. Whatever the reason for this shift, it is causing concern among our key allies in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions.

Perhaps the shift to ambiguity is not entirely accidental, but rather represents a conscious decision. For example, are the Government now fast-tracking engagement with Beijing to hedge against the incoming Trump Administration’s apparently more hawkish approach? The policy of hedging while the new US Administration seeks to remain engaged in European security could risk undermining the special relationship with the Administration, which is otherwise very favourably disposed to us. Our friends in places such as Australia urge us to consider their experience, where they withstood similar bullying from China and in fact ended up stronger in the long term, including under the present Australian Labor Government.

Even the EU now looks set to pursue a tougher line on China than us. The Commission’s new foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, former Prime Minister of Estonia, recently dropped the definition of Beijing as a

“partner, competitor and systemic rival”,

electing instead to refer to it only by the latter point, as a systemic rival. The Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds, has stated that we have no plans to allow the EU’s tariffs on Chinese vehicles. The Government have dropped even the notion of systemic competition, something shared by every single British ally.

We should be in no doubt that the China challenge demands a co-ordinated approach across Whitehall and our alliances. Previously, we articulated what we needed to do in an explicitly integrated approach. Now, our approach appears to be departmentally balkanised to the extent of literally being disintegrated. Who will bring those disparate reviews together?