Hong Kong

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend raised one of those issues in his speech. I agree that if the Chief Executive is elected on as open a mandate as possible, with suffrage that is as universal as possible, there will be a better perception of the process among the people of Hong Kong. I will come to what I think will happen if that does not occur. I agree that we need to move towards a situation in which the candidate elected as Chief Executive is perceived to be representative of all people and all sections in Hong Kong society, including the young and poorer people.

So far, the authorities have given little indication that they are willing to provide consensus in their current offer. The UK Government need to urge them to consider genuinely and listen to the protesters’ concerns. An open consultation is needed, as the problem will not go away. The Chinese Government must allow change and gradual reform to continue. If they do not provide for that, feelings of resentment will fester and when the issue comes up again in 2022—as it surely will—the feelings and protests could be much more serious, deep-seated and profound than they are at present. It is surely in everybody’s interests that we see gradual reform.

Electoral reform was always going to be gradual under the Basic Law. Everyone agrees that that is the best approach, including many pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong. It is also likely to be supported by the Chinese Government, who have their own concerns given the large number of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong. Step-by-step progress would avoid instability for wider China.

However, we need reassurances from the Chinese Government about the principles in the White Paper they recently produced for Hong Kong, which included an obligation for judges to swear an oath of allegiance to the state on election; those proposals need to be examined carefully. Judicial independence was one principle enshrined in the joint agreement and is of utmost importance to Hong Kong in maintaining its current success in the world. We must be clear that nothing should prevent the continuation of that independence, particularly in any case where an individual is challenging the state’s actions in the courts. Such cases must be allowed to continue, and judges must be able to judge them impartially.

It is encouraging that we have not seen large-scale attempts by either the Chinese or Hong Kong Governments to silence the protesters, although, as my hon. Friend said, the BBC website has been blocked in mainland China. That is regrettable. As he and I have both stated, one article in the joint declaration is a commitment to a free press. It is in everybody’s interests that nothing is hushed up by either side, so that we can have a full and fair picture. In this day and age, people will find ways around the jamming of electronic media, so we should encourage full openness. I am greatly encouraged that the current Chief Executive has extended offers to talk to the protesters, although those talks need real substance and should not be merely a smokescreen.

In conclusion, I reaffirm that Hong Kong is the economic jewel in China’s crown.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Before my hon. Friend concludes, will he be absolutely clear that he and the Conservative Friends of the Chinese support the aspiration of the protesters that candidates for Chief Executive should not be vetted by a nominating committee that could exclude candidates it disapproves of?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

That would be the ultimate aim, but I have been quite cautious in my speech. We want gradual change. I am not sure whether we will get to the point my hon. Friend sets out in time for the elections in 2017, but I would hope that we would do so by the elections in 2022.

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[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), my constituency neighbour, on securing this debate and on his measured, balanced and well-informed speech. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)—another neighbour—on his similarly well-informed speech. I also congratulate the Minister on meeting Martin Lee and Anson Chan over the summer. It was important that a British Minister did that. The Deputy Prime Minister met them, as well, something that was appreciated and recognised.

Some of the statements Martin Lee made in The New York Times earlier this month have been pretty shocking. For instance, he wrote:

“At 76 years old, I never expected to be tear-gassed in Hong Kong, my once peaceful home. Like many of the other tens of thousands of calm and nonviolent protesters in the Hong Kong streets last Sunday, I was shocked when the pro-democracy crowd was met by throngs of police officers in full riot gear, carrying weapons and wantonly firing canisters of tear gas. After urging the crowd to remain calm under provocation, I got hit by a cloud of the burning fumes.”

When such accounts reach the world’s media, it is important that we say unambiguously that we support the peaceful process being pursued by the Hong Kong people, as well as their aspirations for freedom and democracy and, quite specifically, their right to elect a leader without a vetting process that would fundamentally undermine the democratic process.

The news today is actually more promising. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester remarked, there is some suggestion that Mr Leung has started to make statements implying the possibility of negotiations and that, while the Hong Kong Government will try to save face by not unbundling the Beijing Government’s whole proposal, there may be some room for discussion about the democratic process behind the nominating committee. That is a positive first step, and we should recognise that.

However, Martin Lee was quite clear in his article in The New York Times that, if the negotiations are to succeed, we in this country and across the western world have a role to play. He said:

“In order for us”—

the Hong Kongers—

“to attain the rights that Beijing has promised, the rest of the world has to stand with Hong Kong. That includes the many multinational companies whose prosperity depends upon our free markets and open-and-honest society, but more important, it includes the world’s free democracies. Hong Kongers deserve more vigorous backing from Washington and London, which pledged to stand by us before the handover in 1997, when Beijing made the promises it is now so blatantly breaking.”

The crisis obviously has implications for Hong Kong, China and UK-China relations, but it also has implications for the international rule of law and the role of international treaties, which is what the joint declaration was—it was registered at the United Nations as such. To take a much more distressing example, the Budapest memorandum, under which Britain and the United States were joint guarantors of the independence of Ukraine, has turned out in practice to be hardly worth the paper it was written on. It is important that China treats the joint declaration much more seriously and that we reinforce respect for it as an international treaty.

[Richard Graham]

On that point, I am sure my hon. Friend, like the rest of us, is absolutely clear that there is nothing specifically in the joint declaration about the arrangements for these, or indeed any other, elections; it simply states that there shall be elections. The methodology is in the Basic Law, and it is entirely an issue for the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments. However, the Basic Law has been amended; like any law, it is not cast in stone for ever. Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that the real issue is the level of dialogue and trust between the Hong Kong Government and their people, and between the Hong Kong Government and the Chinese Government in turn, as they try to find the necessary compromises?

[Martin Horwood]

Yes, I would agree, and my hon. Friend put the point very well. However, this is also about understanding what universal suffrage really means and ensuring that the democratic process of choosing a leader for Hong Kong is free in a way that is understood by the Hong Kong people and by people in democracies around the world—and that does not include prior vetting by a one-party Government in another part of China.

We must be realistic and honest about the limits of our ability as a former colonial power—we did not actually deliver democracy when we were running Hong Kong—to influence this process. We must be persuasive, but we cannot be confrontational with the Government in Beijing. We certainly must be true to our values, but we must recognise that there are limits. We must try to persuade China that it is in its interests to have a stable and free Hong Kong; that is the basis on which Hong Kong’s prosperity has been built.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester rightly said, stability is not just about maintaining the status quo. It is in China’s interests that the process that emerges from whatever negotiations take place delivers a Chief Executive who is in tune with the Hong Kong people, not just through the formal process of democracy, but, for instance, in the sense of recognising issues of economic equality in the territory, as the hon. Member for The Cotswolds mentioned. The Chief Executive should not, for instance, make remarks such as those Mr Leung made about the Occupy Central movement when he dismissed it as being manipulated by external forces. That is dismissive of the aspirations of the community-based movement that has emerged in Hong Kong and would not be acceptable in most democratic leaders.

It is important that we try to persuade the Beijing Government not just to save face, but to move in a direction that recognises the aspirations of the Hong Kong people and to do better than we did as the colonial power—to outdo us—in its administration of Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s future stability certainly depends on that.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

It is not a question of outdoing the United Kingdom as the colonial power. The point my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester made is important: the whole way of governing countries has changed in the period since the handover. People’s expectations are much greater than they were then, particularly where they can see that part of society has benefited from economic development. For example, house prices are horrendously high in Hong Kong. People complain about them here in London, but they are much higher there, which means it is difficult even for children of fairly wealthy parents to get on the property ladder. Young people and poorer people in Hong Kong see that they cannot aspire to such things, and that is why there needs to be change.

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[Martin Horwood]

I would just say that our moral and political position in criticising Beijing would be much stronger if we had done more to deliver democracy for the people of Hong Kong over the many years we controlled the territory. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise the importance of change, and it is right to understand that that change cannot be hermetically sealed in Hong Kong. It is in the interests of China as a whole to understand how it can accommodate people’s economic and political aspirations, because, in this day and age, it is simply not possible for ideas of freedom and protest to be contained in Hong Kong—the traffic of people and electronic information is just too free.

China has seen a remarkable transformation over recent years; it has seen a flowering of not only economic development, but intellectual, artistic and academic potential. In that situation, it will at some stage have to confront its people’s aspirations for more freedoms in the political sphere as well, and it is important that it learns the lessons of Hong Kong and tries to understand how they can be accommodated.

The issue also has lessons for UK foreign policy towards China, which, I hope the Minister will not mind my saying, has been a bit unsophisticated at times in recent years. It has been so dominated by the need to trade and the desire to have a beneficial economic relationship that we have underestimated some of the multiplying concerns about the impact of China as an emerging superpower. Those obviously now include the situation in Hong Kong, but they also include the rapid militarisation—what is rather euphemistically called force projection—taking place in the South China sea, for instance.

Other concerns include the rather confrontational language being used with Vietnam and Taiwan, which is now being told to reflect again on the idea of “one country, two systems” on a rather shorter timetable than previous Chinese leaders talked about. In recent years, the dialogue with Taiwan has been more about progressive development, but the people of Taiwan could interpret China’s language now as quite negative and threatening—as Beijing setting a time limit on their separation from the mainland.

There is also the issue of China’s role on the UN Security Council and its inability to support what most of us in this Chamber would have seen as very necessary action in the middle east and elsewhere. In addition, there is China’s role in Africa and its exploitation of natural resources not only in China itself, but in Africa and other parts of the world, which raises the question of whether that is really sustainable. There is also its domestic human rights record, including the number of executions taking place in China; and the attitude to self-determination in other parts of Chinese territory, such as Tibet.

However, British policy towards China cannot just be one of complaint, and highlighting negatives. There are enormous positives to be found in what it is doing at the moment. As others have mentioned, it is an extraordinary achievement to have lifted millions of people out of poverty. There is a growing awareness of the need for that economic revolution to be sustainable—for resources to be used in a sustainable way, and renewable energy to be brought forward alongside other forms of energy generation. The very existence of the one country, two systems idea can be seen as a Chinese experiment in freedom and democracy. It is positive in that way, and perhaps could not have been imagined by earlier generations.

An intellectual, academic and artistic flowering is also going on in China, which we must see as positive, and which has the potential to benefit not only China but the whole world, given the country’s enormous intellectual and human resources. It would be wonderful to think that Hong Kong could be the shining beacon in the new Chinese revolution, and that the ideas of freedom and democracy could start to be part of a new era for China. It is important that we try to persuade the Chinese Government to see that potential, and, in doing so, stand beside the protesters in Hong Kong, and assure them absolutely of our support for their democratic aspirations.

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[Mark Pawsey]

We are looking at these things very much by our standards. We would certainly want to allow such peaceful protest to continue while the protesters want it to. The notion that it might become illegal would be of great concern to those currently engaged in such peaceful protest.

The Chief Executive’s term comes to an end in 2017. He is a figurehead for the authorities in Hong Kong, but in many ways he seems not to have helped matters. His political career has of course been dogged by accusations that he is unduly influenced by Beijing, and there is evidence of that: on his election the Chinese state newspaper, the People’s Daily, referred to him as “comrade”. He decided to implement some pro-China patriotic lessons in schools in Hong Kong, although that was later vetoed, but that compounded the fears of those who saw him as overly influenced by Beijing. China clearly wants to vet C.Y. Leung’s successors and he supports that, so a big issue for the protesters is that he personally is an obstacle to the pursuit of democratic rights. That is certainly the impression gained by my daughter and her friends.

C.Y. Leung has aggravated the mood of the protesters and those who seek more democracy by recent remarks reported in Tuesday’s South China Morning Post. He said that if the Government met the protesters’ demands, it would

“result in the city’s poorer people dominating elections”

and that

“if candidates were nominated by the public then the largest sector of society…would likely dominate the electoral process.”

That is what democracy is all about and such remarks shock those of us who have grown up with the sort of democratic system we enjoy in this country. C.Y. Leung’s reputation has not been helped by an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 October about what is described as a secret 7 million Australian dollar payout from an Australian firm. That led to questions about the transparency of dealings by a public official.

All that has led to the protests and we are pleased that they have been peaceful on the part of protesters and authorities. The umbrella as a symbol of protest is as unthreatening as can be imagined. Many of the young people and British people who have been attracted to Hong Kong sympathise and find themselves supportive of the protesters who are seeking what westerners have always taken for granted.

There are, however, some concerns. The protests have carried on for so long that the blocking of main thoroughfares such as Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok is starting to affect people’s daily life. Journeys that previously took 15 minutes are now taking around two hours as people transfer from road to the mass transit railway, which is usually very efficient. That has led to businesses losing trade and concern within the business sector, with some business people beginning to show their frustration with protesters. It has also led to some ordinary people giving the areas of protest a wide berth, which is having an impact on businesses in those areas.

The big question for us to consider—I look forward to the Minister’s response—is what happens next. I have spoken about the economic impact and it has been suggested that Hong Kong’s tourist industry could face its worst decline in a decade. The protests have already prompted some cancellations of hotel bookings. October and November are typically the peak season for its hotel industry as business travellers arrive for trade fairs and exhibitions and there are fears that business travellers will cut short or even cancel their trips because of safety concerns. How that might develop?

What might the Chinese authorities’ longer-term response be? They have made it clear that there will be no concessions on political reform. They are digging in their heels because the international community might see granting a concession as a sign of weakness by Beijing. Where that might go is a concern and clearly the solution should arise from politics rather than force.

Talks took place between student leaders and the Government only yesterday, but I see them in a less positive light than the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). They were televised and watched live at protest sites, but the South China Morning Post reports today that nothing has changed and that the Government have simply offered to submit a report to Beijing reflecting public sentiment, and to consider setting up a platform for dialogue on constitutional development. That sounds as good a description of kicking the matter into long grass as we are ever likely to hear, and we often hear such expressions in this place.

Crucially, the Government have said that there will be no movement on the nomination of candidates and the Government’s remarks through Chief Secretary Lam—that protesters should pursue their ideals in reasonable and lawful ways—may indicate that the occupation of public highways might in time be considered unlawful.

[Martin Horwood]

I am largely in sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but even in this place—the mother of Parliaments—we are familiar with the phenomenon of authorities not always giving the appearance of being about to make concessions before they go on to make them. China often moves even more gradually and slowly. I do not think the progress by Mr Leung goes far enough—I have said that I support the protesters’ aspirations—but at least it shows a willingness to negotiate and to make some changes to the proposed arrangements, which he should welcome.

[Mark Pawsey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am seeing the events with the eyes of someone who is based in this place and does not have much knowledge of how government works in Beijing. I am taking them at face value and I am encouraged by his positive response to the report of the outcome of that meeting.

My concerns are for people who are currently living in Hong Kong, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister how our Government can influence the successful outcome of the position today.