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UK should take China to task on human rights and Taiwan, MPs say
Britain must take a tougher stance on China over its severe human rights abuses and help Taiwan build its defences to deter a potential attack from Beijing, an influential group of MPs says.
With the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, scheduled to land in China on Wednesday for a first official visit in five years, a report from the foreign affairs select committee says ministers have to call out the country’s transnational repression.
China’s behaviour is a threat to world security that cannot be ignored, it says.
The Chinese Communist party (CCP) is “seeking to silence criticism of its human rights abuses, and impose its foreign policy and Xi Jinping’s thought beyond its own borders”, the committee, which is Tory controlled, writes. “This is a challenge to the functioning of democracies globally.”
In an embarrassment for Cleverly, the committee accuses him of leaving a void in the government’s China policy, which it says has been kept secret from ministers – leaving universities, companies and Whitehall departments confused about what interactions with China are permissible.
It proposes ministers publish an unclassified version of its China strategy.
The foreign secretary’s long planned visit had been diplomatically choreographed to give the impression that the UK was seeking to repair political and economic cooperation with Beijing on issues such as the climate crisis, trade and Ukraine without abandoning western values. He is expected to meet his counterpart, Wang Yi, and China’s vice-president, Han Zheng.
The select committee says the UK’s China strategy has been withheld from many ministers for security reasons, making it difficult for “both state and non-state actors, including civil servants, academics and businesses” to comply with government plans.
“Given the publication by Germany of a China strategy, it is evidently possible for the UK government to publish a public, unclassified strategy,” it says.
The committee also calls for a centralised definition of critical national infrastructure to reverse the UK’s already excessive over-reliance on Chinese technology.
The report says China is “seeking to extend its power to other countries with the explicit use of transnational repression as a form of foreign policy”.
It calls for a clear policy of zero tolerance on such repression, and questions why no Chinese diplomats were expelled from the UK after a demonstrator was manhandled by diplomats at a protest outside China’s consulate in Manchester.
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30/08/2023