AUKUS: Impact on Anglo-Chinese Relations

Mark Logan Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Davies. This is my first Westminster Hall debate, and is one of the very few debates in which I have spoken since I was elected to Parliament in December 2019, because I am a PMP: a pandemic Member of Parliament. To concur with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), it is great to see the Minister in her place, and I congratulate her on having one of the most important jobs in Government. It is also great to see Opposition Members here.

I will start by responding briefly to a few points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), before making a short speech—in brevity, there is wit. Having lived in China for over a decade, I always find it slightly misguided to put Russia and China in the same category, but that has become a habit in western rhetoric in recent years. When one is on the ground in each of those countries, one sees very different dynamics in play. In China, there is a real belief that today can be better than yesterday, and that tomorrow will be even better. On a personal level, many of the values of its people can be very similar to ours. Parents there want the best for their kids, which is why we have around 200,000 students from China in the UK. There is a fixation on prosperity over everything else—one does not always get that in Russia.

There was a lot of chat about threats from China, but there is a huge amount of opportunity to be gained from working and collaborating closely with China in a whole host of areas—for example, on climate change, COP26 and what comes after it. Unlike many of my Conservative hon. Friends, I have not given up on China yet. Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I still think we can influence China’s direction. However, we will not do so if we stand on the sidelines, hector and use an overly hawkish tone.

The reality of the 20th century was that the United States existed and one had to work with it; one could not just ignore the United States and operate with Canada, Mexico or whoever else. The same applies to China in the 21st century. We should closely navigate a balance between the opportunities and the threats in this bilateral relationship.

A point was made about China’s diplomacy with different countries and how countries have been pushing back. There is truth in what my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said, but it is more of a mixed bag. Developing countries across the belt and road, for example, have quite positive views of China’s impact on them. I call on our Chinese counterparts to work a bit harder on the diplomatic front, because the wolf warrior diplomacy that we have seen over the last two years is not helpful when it comes to trying to have—to borrow a Chinese phrase—a harmonious relationship.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham referred to China as a communist country, but anyone who has studied China, and wannabe Sinologists like me, often wonder whether it is. Is it communist, Confucianist, or more Marxist than Leninist? On China’s Leninism, my hon. Friend said something that chimed with me when he spoke of the Politburo and its influence on society. There is an argument that Leninism, along with state capitalism, might explain China better than communism or any other label.

Lastly, I want to respond to my hon. Friend’s fantastic point about Lee Kuan Yew, in Singapore. What the west needs is its own version of Lee Kuan Yew. He was one of the most successful politicians of the last century, from any country, and was able to lead Singapore—a country of between 5 million and 7 million people—I am looking over at the officials for the exact figure; perhaps they can get it from Wikipedia. Singapore has done a fantastic job of navigating relations between the east and west, and there is much to learn from that.

My daughter is half Chinese and half Ulster Scots—I am looking at the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—as her father is from the lovely county of Antrim. That is a very special mixture. China does not always sneer at the west, to use the hon. Member’s words; in fact, part of its success over the last 30 or 40 years is that it has learned so much from us. That is why it has sent hundreds of thousands of students to the west, and why its cityscapes can look so similar to those in the United States. The problem sometimes is that the US and China are so similar: they both want to be No. 1. They want to compete with one another; their people are very ambitious. There is much to learn from both the east and west, and much to gain from China and the UK working closely together.

We can see that from the members of the Chinese diaspora living in the United Kingdom. They are among the highest-performing students at primary school, secondary school and university. They have some of the highest incomes of any ethnic group, and some of the lowest levels of mental illness and crime, when we compare them to many countries with recorded labels. Those on the eastern and western fronts can learn from each other, politically and culturally.

I am conscious that I have roughly one minute left, Mr Davies. We need to be cautious about using words such as “adversary”, because I do not think that China has previously taken the UK to be an adversary. It has not seen us as the enemy, and I say that having lived there for 13 years. The Chinese people’s opinion and perspective of the UK is that it is among the best of the 200 countries around the world. Looking at the British Council statistics from last year, only France and Germany usually outshine us. There is an awful amount of good will towards us from the Chinese people, and we should not obfuscate that. We should be cautious about the words we use.

I will close on the issue of Sinophobia. I am cautious about AUKUS. It is an interesting development, and the jury is still out on the extent to which it could feed into a security dilemma or bring more peace to the region. From the UK perspective, my worry is that the increasing narrative vis-à-vis China—one of negativity—is having an adverse impact on Chinese, east Asian and south-east Asian communities in our country. Thank you very much for the time today, Mr Davies. I look forward to following up with colleagues after the debate.