United Kingdom and China

Lord Wilson of Tillyorn Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Tillyorn (CB)]

My Lords, China is enormously important. There are always new things happening there, and it is endlessly interesting. I feel very supportive of the view that China is now so much of a world power that we must be involved with China, try to get China involved in all the major issues in the world, encourage China to take part in international organisations, and encourage those organisations sometimes to adjust themselves to take account of China’s joining.

The visit recently by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Mayor of London to Peking seems to have put our own bilateral relationship back on some good rails, and that is very encouraging because, without that top-level relationship in good order, it becomes much harder to deal with things at different levels. It is interesting to note that, as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, in his splendid and far-ranging speech opening the debate, said, over the past three years, despite some difficulties in our own bilateral political relationship, our exports to China have gone steadily up, and Chinese investment here has gone up too.

As the major things have by and large been dealt with, I should like to concentrate on some practical building blocks in the relationship with China. The first is the importance of learning the language, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, has just referred. My attention was drawn the other day to an extract from a foreign-language journal in Shanghai. It lamented the fact that foreign businessmen in Shanghai failed to realise that speaking Chinese was essential to promoting trade. The date was January 1924. The point is still worth making, but the good news about our trading relationship with China is the significant number of young people, including from the United Kingdom, who go to China, who deeply immerse themselves, and who speak very good Chinese. I find that very encouraging.

I find, too, very encouraging the fact that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seems to be reverting to a more traditional approach of believing that regional expertise really does matter and that language matters. I understand that, with the strong support of the Foreign Secretary, there has been a great promotion of learning foreign languages, including Chinese. It would be very interesting if the Minister had those figures because it would inform us.

The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, referred to the single step that starts any long journey. The single step is at a lower level. University work on China, as he pointed out, particularly at PhD level, is not nearly good enough. The number of students at university level is not good enough. We also need to start at school level. There the picture is mildly encouraging. I should declare an interest. I am president of the Scotland-China Education Network, which tries to promote the teaching of Chinese in Scottish schools under the inspired leadership of Dr. Judith McClure, former head teacher of one of the major girls’ schools in Scotland. There are about 10,000 young people in Scotland learning Chinese at state schools, and there will be more in the private sector.

There are, however, practical problems. This gets back to the visa problem, to which so many noble Lords have referred in different forms. There is the problem of getting people from China to teach Chinese in our schools throughout the UK. Recently, to take an example in Scotland, the Confucius Institute in Strathclyde University in Glasgow wanted to renew the contracts of some of their Chinese teachers who had been there a year. The UK Border Agency has apparently changed its rule so you can have a year, and it cannot be renewed. Some of those teachers were told they could not come back. Late last night I was told that the immediate problem has been resolved, but the underlying problem remains: how do we get people from China to teach Chinese? There is a similar problem at another Confucius Institute, the one at Aberdeen University, where I have an expired interest, having stepped down as chancellor at the end of last year. I hope the Minister will take account of these problems, although they are not his departmental responsibility, and try to bring together the UK Border Agency with those who are involved. Perhaps it would be a good sort of birthday thing to do before, sadly, he steps down from his present post.

The noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, referred to the significance of law in China. There was a very good programme here run by the Great Britain China Centre, of which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, is president, to train Chinese judges. About 80 have been trained in the past decade or more. Funding, which came from the Ministry of Justice, has run out. It is a very good, practical thing we could do. Those people go back to China, their influence spreads, and it is extremely valuable. Perhaps the ODA could take that on.

Finally, there is the matter of Hong Kong, to which the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, also referred. Our political position there has hugely changed since 1997 but Hong Kong has institutions, a legal set-up and a government structure which make it very user-friendly for people from the United Kingdom. It is a very good jumping-off ground for trade and all involvement with China. I am sure that the Minister, with his own personal background, will feel strongly about that and therefore I can appeal to him to encourage his colleagues to continue to see the importance of Hong Kong in our relationship with China.