UK-Taiwan Friendship and Co-operation

Richard Graham Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend and I will come back to that point, because she will not be surprised to hear that I wish to build on it.

Those of us who have some experience of fighting in mountains know that it is a lot harder for the attacker than the defender. Those of us who have sadly spent too much time reading stories of Operation Overlord will know that even the short straits that separate us from northern France provided an extremely difficult obstacle for our forebears to get over. So 100 miles of really difficult water to cross on the straits of Taiwan really does present an obstacle. Indeed, the sea state there is often so difficult that only for very short windows is it possible to truly cross. The landing positions that the Chinese forces would need to assault are narrow and therefore likely to afford Taiwanese forces the ability to defend.

I do not think that we should really be looking at the military threat in the classical sense. Instead, we are looking at the military threat in the sense of what we see from Russia in Ukraine and, sadly, from China in other parts of the world. We are seeing an erosion—an erosion of the will to fight, an erosion of the nation state to hold together, and an erosion of the integrity of a society to resist pressure—and that is coming in many, many different ways.

The first, sadly, is in what has become known as fake news: the disinformation campaigns that we are seeing around the world, the extraordinary assaults on our intelligence, our intellect and our ability to talk to one another as equals by spreading the hatred and lies that we see, sadly, too frequently here in the UK, in the United States and in many other countries. We are seeing that being absolutely industrialised in countries such as Ukraine and Taiwan. They are not the sole aim of these targets, but merely the roadblock on the way to the rest, because this is intended to change the way in which the global economy works and the way in which our people—the British people—are able to live their lives and enjoy their futures. It is intended to erode our liberties so that a few rich men in Beijing and Moscow can enjoy their stolen goods and make sure that they sleep at night.

That is not acceptable. We were not elected to this place and charged with being here to sacrifice the freedoms of the British people to a couple of despots in Beijing or Moscow. Standing up with our allies and friends around the world is exactly what we should be doing, but again, this is not just about them, because the techniques that we are seeing in Taiwan and Ukraine are spreading here.

Today, like every day, businesses and individuals in Taipei and across the island will be the subject of quite literally millions of cyber-attacks. They are under such intense assault that it is very difficult to understand how many routine operations can continue, and yet they do. We are seeing the same type of assaults here in the UK—not the same volume, but the same type—and we therefore have a lot to learn from Taiwan in how it resists. The same is true in Ukraine, where we are seeing Russia learning a whole new way of doing warfare by interrupting everything from the electricity grid to the communications networks in order to undermine the capability of the state and society to hold together.

But we are also seeing that here in the UK and that brings me to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton so rightly made. We are seeing an erosion of our own freedoms here in the UK, and not just through the dirty money that the Foreign Affairs Committee has been so clear in calling out since 2018. Indeed, I see on the Opposition Front Bench the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who was on the Foreign Affairs Committee at the time—promotion for some!

We have been calling this out for a long time because it is fundamentally undermining the prosperity and happiness of the British people. We are seeing properties being over-inflated in value. We are seeing assets being used to undermine us, not to support us. We are seeing assets of community value—football teams and businesses—being used effectively as a piggybank from which cash can be removed on future occasions for pay for operations on behalf of a state that thinks nothing of attempting to murder the Prime Minister of Montenegro, actually murdering a citizen in the United Kingdom using a nuclear substance, using chemical weapons on the streets of Salisbury, blowing up an arms dump in Prague, and threatening literally thousands of people with cold and famine by trafficking them and forcing them into the forests around Belarus to use as weapons against the people of Poland and Lithuania. This is not a co-operative state; it is a hostile state and these are its actions. Here, we need to do more about it. We need to stop the dirty money, which we have called for, but we need to go further, because we are also—this is the tragedy—seeing the erosion of the liberty of some British people. The freedoms that we value are the freedoms that we need to stand for.

Yesterday, sadly, for the 100th or 200th time—I cannot remember how many—I spoke to some students who told me that their debates in their universities were silenced. They said that people were not willing to speak out or to stand up for what they knew was true because they would face the pressure of the Ministry of State Security, China’s enforcement arm, in silencing them in debate here in the UK. I spoke to them about the nature of this interference and they said that sadly it often comes from a fellow student or from a teacher or lecturer who is connected in some way to the state. We are seeing the erosion of the liberty of British citizens and of those who have come here seeking that liberty, whichever country they come from, because we are sadly not robust enough in standing up for it.

We need to close down the Confucius Institutes. They are agencies of a hostile state through the United Front Work Department—an organisation that we in this House have grown used to in recent days because of the works of Christine Lee, who we were all warned about. We have got used to the actions that it has been taking in seeking influence, in the most extraordinary propaganda operation that the world has ever seen, and we have got used to the pernicious effect on our own community.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton spoke about the theft of intellectual property—some of it, sadly, intellectual property that should remain secret. She is absolutely right. Defending state secrets is, after all, an essential role of government. But defending the liberty of British people to study and learn ideas of any kind, of any form, in a free environment at a university or a school, is surely even more fundamental than that. We must maintain absolute freedom of our people to express their views, whether on Tibet, as my hon. Friend did, on the status of Hong Kong, or, as officials in Beijing did only the other day, on the status of the Falkland Islands. They can express their views however they wish. Silencing debate undermines us and erodes freedom. It also erodes our path to the future.

Let me tell the House why I am still optimistic, despite that catalogue of crimes that I think have been committed against us. When I look forward, I see beacons like Taiwan as a demonstration that, actually, free people choose freedom. I see an example showing that Chinese society and culture, in different forms, are intrinsically at home with liberty. I see the writings in the universal declaration of human rights—written by an ambassador from China, P.C. Chang—and I see the rights that are literally encoded in the fundamental documents of the international community. I therefore see the hope that the attempts of the Chinese state—the Communist party—to silence these people will eventually fail, because they will.

What we are seeing coming out of Taiwan is another example of why those attempts will fail. Many people will know that TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor chip manufacturer, constitutes an extraordinary demonstration of innovation and capability on the island. It is a fantastic example of the meeting of science and craft, in that it brings together the skills of innovation and the skills of creation. I think it fair to say that it is now one of the keystones of the global economy. Delays caused to its output by various water issues and other problems had a direct effect on the manufacturing of cars and kettles, even here in the UK. It is essential to our global economy, and it is telling that its extraordinary success is based on the free ideas and the creativity that are needed—or, rather, can only be achieved—in a free society. This is a very good reminder that liberty does not just feed the soul; it feeds the pocket, and it feeds prosperity for everyone.

We see people around the world making choices. We see the migrant routes out of various parts of the world, and we see where those migrants go. There are not that many who think that China or Russia is a good idea, but there are many who choose freedom in countries such ours. When I see the threats that are ranged before us, I feel that what we are seeing coming out of Beijing today, and what we are seeing coming out of Moscow today, is much more in keeping with Shakespeare’s King Lear than with Henry V.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am reluctant to intervene on a substantial speech in a field about which my hon. Friend is very knowledgeable. May I suggest, however, that the principal challenge for any Government when it comes to foreign affairs is fundamentally to deal with the world as it is, while also working for the world that we would wish for, and without inadvertently making it worse in so doing?

If my hon. Friend agrees with me on that point, does he also agree that the status quo in the constitutional position of the Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan, has actually enabled it to flourish in its evolution as a peaceful and successful democracy, within which its relationship with us has strengthened considerably over recent time? Does he agree that in all of this, our shared values help to shape that relationship—and the fact that we are at the scoping stage of a Westminster Foundation for Democracy programme in Taiwan is one example of this—but that we should do nothing that might inadvertently trigger a reaction by China that would be good neither for the Chinese nor for us, and considering changing the name of their representation in the UK would be precisely such a measure?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I entirely respect my hon. Friend’s position. As he knows, we have had many discussions on a similar basis and on a similar note outside this place. He is right that we have to deal with the world as it is and gently encourage it to be the world that it should be—it is safe to say that neither of us is a revolutionary. The work that my hon. Friend does with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy is so important, because it builds on the essential liberty of people and on the fundamental principle that P. C. Chang embedded into the universal declaration of human rights: that of respect for individual choice and that a community should be able to choose its own destiny.

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is not for me to tell the Republic of China (Taiwan) how it wishes to name itself and what it wishes to choose, but nor is it for Beijing. It is for the people on the island of Taiwan to decide for themselves how they wish to shape their future. We here recognise that principle not just in overseas jurisdictions such as the Falkland Islands; we even recognised it in 2014 in respect of part of our integral United Kingdom. Although my hon. Friend and I were on the same side of the argument then and some on the Opposition Benches were on the other side, we all recognised the sovereignty of the people of these islands to choose the shape of their liberty and the way in which they expressed the community to which they felt they belonged. If we recognised that freedom even when it hurt us most and when it cost us dearest, why should we not recognise it for people who have absolutely the same inherent rights as anybody on these islands and have, indeed, demonstrated time and again that they have not only the capability but the will to express their freedom through democracy and to choose leaders whom we sometimes like and sometimes do not? Surely it is up to them, not up to Beijing.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but of course it is important to realise that Taiwan’s excellent President has deliberately avoided making any call for independence. The House should reflect on that in terms of our own position.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why I repeat my statement: it is not for me to change the name of the representative of the island here, but it is for me to recognise that the people of that island have the right to choose.

We can, at this point, get into a different debate about Lithuania. I pay huge tribute to Mr Landsbergis, Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, for his courage in standing up against the bullying of Beijing. He has demonstrated that many larger countries that currently bow down and pretend they do not have a choice actually do have a choice. Lithuania may have a great past in which it was a huge grand duchy, but the reality of the size of the state today is that it is not one of the P5. Yet Lithuania has taken the courageous decision to defend itself.

I will close my speech with this last point: over the past four or five years we have seen an evolution of pressure on us and others around the world that is undermining democracy, that is eroding our freedoms and that imperils our economic future. This is a choice for us all. The decision to stand with free peoples in Taiwan and Ukraine is about standing up for our own liberties and freedoms. That is why the House is right to push for it and the Government are right to back it.