House of Commons
Foreign Affairs Committee
Government policy
towards China
Oral and written evidence
Tuesday 2 July 2013
Professor Shaun Breslin, Department of Politics
and International Studies, University of
Warwick, and Associate Fellow, Asia
Programme, Chatham House; Professor Steve
Tsang, Director, China Policy Institute,
University of Nottingham; Mr Nigel Inkster,
Director, Transnational Threats and Political
Risk, International Institute for Strategic
Studies (IISS)
Ordered by the House of Commons
to be printed 2 July 2013
HC 529-i
Published on 29 August 2013
by authority of the House of Commons
London: The Stationery Office Limited
£7.50
The Foreign Affairs Committee
The Foreign Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure,
administration and policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its associated agencies.
Current membership
Richard Ottaway (Conservative, Croydon South) (Chair)
Mr John Baron (Conservative, Basildon and Billericay)
Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell (Liberal Democrat, North East Fife)
Rt Hon Ann Clwyd (Labour, Cynon Valley)
Mike Gapes (Labour/Co-op, Ilford South)
Mark Hendrick (Labour/Co-op, Preston)
Sandra Osborne (Labour, Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
Andrew Rosindell (Conservative, Romford)
Mr Frank Roy (Labour, Motherwell and Wishaw)
Rt Hon Sir John Stanley (Conservative, Tonbridge and Malling)
Rory Stewart (Conservative, Penrith and The Border)
The following Members were also members of the Committee during the Parliament:
Rt Hon Bob Ainsworth (Labour, Coventry North East)
Emma Reynolds (Labour, Wolverhampton North East)
Mr Dave Watts (Labour, St Helens North)
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The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the
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4
Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
List of witnesses
Tuesday 2 July 2013
Page
Professor Shaun Breslin, Department of Politics and International
Studies, University of Warwick, and Associate Fellow, Asia Programme,
Chatham House, Professor Steve Tsang, Director, China Policy Institute,
University of Nottingham
Ev 1
Mr Nigel Inkster, Director, Transnational Threats and Political Risk,
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
Ev 11
List of written evidence
1
Written evidence from Professor Kerry Brown, Director, China Studies Centre,
University of Sydney, and Associate Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House
Ev 17
2
Written evidence from Human Rights Watch
Ev 20
3
Written evidence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Ev 23
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 1
Oral evidence
Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee
on Tuesday 2 July 2013
Members present:
Richard Ottaway (Chair)
Mr John Baron
Ann Clwyd
Mike Gapes
Sandra Osborne
Andrew Rosindell
Mr Frank Roy
Sir John Stanley
Rory Stewart
________________
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Professor Shaun Breslin, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick,
and Associate Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House, and Professor Steve Tsang, Director of the China
Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, gave evidence.
Q1 Chair: May I welcome members of the public to
this sitting of the Foreign Affairs Committee? This is
a one-off topical evidence session on UK policy
towards China, to explore progress in the
Government’s effort to deepen UK-China ties and the
implications for the UK of the new Chinese
leadership.
We are taking evidence from three witnesses today. I
am pleased to welcome, for our first session, Professor
Shaun Breslin, Department of Politics and
International Studies at the University of Warwick and
Associate Fellow of the Asia Programme at Chatham
House, where he briefed the Committee a few months
ago on a similar subject. I also welcome Professor
Steve Tsang, Director of the China Policy Institute at
the University of Nottingham. May I give a warm
welcome to you both? It is very much appreciated that
you have taken the time to come to speak to us today.
I gather that you are both happy to go straight into
questions. May I just ask a general question to start
with? How does China see Britain? Are we a bit of a
minnow, or do we have value as a member of the EU?
Would they rather be talking to the EU than to
Britain?
Professor Breslin: I think the UK occupies a bit of an
odd situation, often, in Chinese thinking, in that it is
a key power in the European Union and it is also seen
as a key bilateral power. But at times I think it really
depends on how the UK lines up with or against the
United States when it comes to major strategic
considerations, for example over humanitarian
intervention in Libya. Of course, there is the particular
situation of Security Council permanent membership.
I think the UK occupies two or three different roles in
Chinese thinking. It almost depends on the issue—
economics is perhaps different from big questions of
security when it comes to the Security Council. It also
depends on how Britain is perceived by the Chinese
to be operating in or with the United States, or perhaps
taking a more separate, independent line.
Professor Tsang: I would say that the Chinese still
have an element of historical baggage about the UK.
That is fading very much after the Hong Kong
handover, but there is still that legacy of the history,
which is not totally irrelevant. I think there is an
element of trying to put the UK more, if you like, in
its place, rather than being seen as the leading member
of the EU.
I think they would like to put Germany much higher
in terms of the pecking order in the EU as a major
partner and of a relationship that they want to
cultivate. But they also see that the UK is far more
open than the other EU members, and therefore we
offer opportunities that others may not be quite so
open to offer.
Q2 Chair: Does our visa regime pose a problem to
UK-Chinese relations? Has that come across either of
your desks?
Professor Tsang: Yes. The visa issue is certainly a
problem in terms of the number of Chinese visitors
coming to the UK. If we were, for example, part of
Schengen, there would be a much higher number of
Chinese visitors to this country. The fact that they
have to apply for a separate visa to come to the UK
is a bit of a deterrent. For a lot of Chinese tourists,
they take a utilitarian view—they have one Schengen
visa and they can go to many European countries in
one tour, whereas the UK is the UK.
Professor Breslin: Yes. I think there is a bit of a
feeling that China has been singled out for things that
have happened in the past. On a very personal level,
it makes it problematic if you bring in Chinese visitors
and want to take them to Brussels: often, the timing
of it is really quite difficult and we have had to cancel
some people coming to conferences, because they
have not been able to get things in time. That is purely
on a personal level, rather than as a UK policy issue.
Q3 Sir John Stanley: The section on China in
Amnesty International’s 2013 report, The State of the
World’s Human Rights, begins—I just offer the
opening sentence; I could offer a great deal more—
“The authorities maintained a stranglehold on political
activists, human rights defenders and online activists,
subjecting many to harassment, intimidation, arbitrary
detention and enforced disappearance.”
I made my first visit to China 35 years ago, and I have
to say from where I am that in that 35-year period I
have not seen any material diminution of what
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Ev 2 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
Amnesty describes as the “stranglehold” on political
activists. Do you consider, therefore, that the British
Government’s attempts over that period to reduce that
stranglehold have been a failure? Do you have any
alternative policies that the British Government might
follow to achieve a greater measure of success?
Professor Tsang: If I may, my understanding of
British Government policy is not to do that, in fact,
but to improve the conditions of human rights in
China. If we are looking at the situation of human
rights in China, I would say that it probably has in
fact improved. I am not contradicting anything that
you have said from the report. What has been said in
the report is accurate, but on a day-to-day basis, most
abuses of human rights happened in China because of
the failure of the criminal justice system, rather than
because of the specific prosecutions of political
dissidents and opposition people.
There is just no way that the Chinese Government,
under the Communist Party, is going to relent in terms
of control over dissidents. They are not going to do
that whatever we may try to say or whatever we may
try to do to engage with them. But in terms of the
overall human rights situation, there is scope for
things to be improved. We have seen some of that
being improved simply by helping the Chinese with
improving the quality of justice being delivered. As
far as that went, the British Government’s record has
not really been as bad as might have been implied.
Professor Breslin: I would start by saying that, while
I think it is true in terms of political activists, there is
a greater political space now for people to discuss and
debate some things in China, bearing in mind that that
space can open and shrink. There have been a number
of high-profile cases where officials have been
brought to book, effectively, by online campaigns,
newspapers seeking justice and so on.
That might not be political activism as Amnesty
International defines it, but there is greater space at
times for popular engagement within politics and
perhaps for debating political ideas. This is a country
where at the moment there is almost unprecedented
debate taking place over what China’s global role
should be, for example. That is not really what
Amnesty International means by political activism,
but we should not think that that is the same thing as
closing down all political thought: at times, it can be
quite plural.
I am not sure what more could have been achieved if
the United Kingdom had taken a different line over
China—for example, if it had perhaps emphasised
human rights more and economic relations less. I am
a believer in changes in China emerging because of
changes that take place and evolve within Chinese
political and social life itself.
I agree entirely with Steve that the best thing the UK
can do, and does quietly, is to help in those technical
areas—training judges, training the legal system—and
to encourage China to do what it promises to do under
the law at the moment. I am not sure whether another
policy would have necessarily generated anything
different. I think the changes will come from within
rather than necessarily from without.
Q4 Mr Roy: What ramifications will the changes in
the leadership have for the relationship between the
UK and China?
Professor Breslin: I wrote a paper a few years ago
called, “Do leaders matter?” in China. I suppose the
answer should have been, “No, they don’t”, but of
course the answer was, to put it accurately, “Yes, of
course they do, but perhaps not quite as much as they
did in the past and perhaps in different ways.”
When Deng Xiaoping came to power, it was
effectively a coup; it overthrew the leadership and you
moved entirely in a new direction. That is not the way
leadership change takes place in China anymore. The
new leaders are a reflection of the balance of power
and different interests in the Chinese political system.
They got to be where they are because of those power
constellations. When they come to power, they cannot
immediately just go like that and act, ignoring those
constellations of power; they are a reflection of that
political system. So I think it is going to take perhaps
another year or so before we really begin to see them
implanting their own agendas internationally and, I
think most clearly, domestically.
Obviously we need to pay attention to who the new
leaders are. This new generation of leaders are
primarily social scientists rather than the technicians
of the past. We obviously need to pay attention to
them, but we need to recognise that China has become
an increasingly complex and diverse polity, with more
interests affecting policy, not just at the central level,
but also in local government. We should not expect
leadership changes at the top to have big, dramatic
shifts in policy. I think it is going to be pretty much
more of the same for the time being.
Q5 Mr Roy: In the same vein, the UK wants to
deepen its work in relation to the international work
that China does, and to economic and commercial
links. How should the UK Government interpret the
changeover?
Professor Tsang: May I deal with both questions? In
terms of the leadership change, it would matter
because the new leadership is much more confident
and inclined to be assertive. The change in the rhetoric
from Hu Jintao talking about a harmonious world,
which is an extension of the domestic policy of
promoting a harmonious society, to Xi Jinping’s
promotion of a China dream is important. The China
dream is, as the Foreign Office paper says, all about
national rejuvenation or revival. What does that
mean? That has not been clearly spelled out, but the
reality is that China is already a veto-holding
permanent member of the Security Council. No state
in the world, post-Second World War, can enjoy a
more distinguished status than that. What more can
there be, apart from something that is inclined to be
assertive in a way of reviving the old glory of the old
imperial period?
That, again, brings us back the history: the UK was
the first country to challenge that in the 19th century.
That may, in a sense, bring back a bit of the history
there. There is also the issue of how things are
unfolding in Hong Kong. If things do not go as well
as everyone would like them to be in Hong Kong, we
are likely to be blamed in some way. We have to bear
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 3
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
it in mind that there potentially will be ramifications
some time down the line.
Of course, on the one hand, a more assertive China is
welcome. I think we would like China to play a more
proactive role as a member of the Security Council
and as a responsible great power. On the other hand,
if there is a lot of going back to what the history was,
then we have reasons not to be completely
comfortable.
In terms of how we should focus on the economic and
trade relationship, we really should focus exactly on
economic and trade relations and try to insulate the
politics from those as far as possible. I think that
comes through as basically what the Foreign Office is
trying to push. I don’t think there is an alternative to
that. We have to bear in mind where the Chinese are
coming from, but if we start off with a policy that
assumes the Chinese are going to be doing anything
more than just engaging with us economically and in
trade relationships—then we are going to encourage
them to do that. The only way we can do it is to focus
on economic and trade relationships.
We have a remarkably open economy, not only in
terms of trade but in welcoming foreign investment.
We should continue to do that with the Chinese unless
they cross the line. If they don’t cross the line, I don’t
see any particular problem. If they are going to invest,
for example, in High Speed 2 and deliver a first-class
product at a substantially more competitive price with
the standards we require and expect, I don’t have a
problem with that. We just have to make sure those
standards are not compromised in any way for
political, diplomatic or other considerations.
Professor Breslin: One of the things the UK has done
well over the years is recognised that there is more to
China than Beijing and Hong Kong; some of its
provinces are bigger than any of the European
countries. Having a diverse set of relationships that
deals with the provinces and looks at the different
centres of power and economic growth in China as
potential partners is a very good strategy. That is
something the UK has done. We have offices across
the country, but I think we can do a bit more about it.
If I can come back to the last point you made, there
is a lot of money in China that is waiting to come out.
It is seeking access to markets, but it is also seeking
technology and know-how. We need to have a debate
about whether we are happy to be totally open to
investment, of whatever sort. Maybe that debate needs
to take place with people elsewhere. I know that in
Washington, for example, there is considerable
concern that Europe and perhaps Britain will be more
open to trade and investment from China in areas that
the United States is not very keen on. We have to
trilateralise, if you like, our thinking on this.
Q6 Ann Clwyd: You said that change will come
from within China. What effect did the Prime
Minister’s visit with the Dalai Lama last year have in
China? Were there any repercussions?
Professor Breslin: The answer to that is yes, there
clearly were. There is a website—I wish I could
remember its name—that documents the number of
times the feelings of the Chinese people have been
hurt by foreign dignitaries. It is almost always to do
with interference in what are considered to be issues
of China’s domestic national sovereignty, which
foreigners have not only no right to discuss but no
right to get involved in at all. Tibet is often one of
those issues.
It was quite clear that there was concern within China
not only that the meeting took place; certain people
whom I spoke to were wondering what the ulterior
motives were behind it. They did not just see it as
a meeting, but as a part of a greater attempt by the
Government to do something to China. They couldn’t
quite work out what, but they saw it as being that.
They saw it as a deliberate political step, which
needed to be responded to. It is something that has
happened time and time again, not just to the UK but
to other countries, with Nobel Peace Prizes and things
like that. It is a fact of life in dealing with China today.
Professor Tsang: I do not disagree with Professor
Breslin about how the Chinese see this, but my
opinion about how we should deal with it is slightly
different. Who the Prime Minister of this country sees
is a matter for the Prime Minister and the electorate
of this country. It is not the business of any other
country. In any event, when the Prime Minister saw
the Dalai Lama, he made it very clear that he saw him
as a religious leader in a religious establishment. That
is not something for us to be uncomfortable or
apologetic about.
If the European Union were to act as one on this
matter, I think the Chinese Government would
respond in a different way. In terms of the United
States, the American President would meet with the
Dalai Lama and the Chinese would have business—
more or less—as usual with the Americans. European
countries can be divided and ruled. Therefore, we are
being treated in a different way, until eventually one
after the other a European Prime Minister or President
will use a form of language that the Chinese
Government will approve of before they will let that
relationship be restored.
If we want China to be engaged rightfully as a major,
leading force in the world, we have to engage it in the
way that it should be done, which is that we would
not want in any way to attempt to dictate terms to
China about how it should behave, nor would we
accept China dictating terms on how we should
behave.
Professor Breslin: I do not disagree with that at all,
but if the question is, “Did it create problems for
Britain in China?”, the answer is yes. You might be
right that it should not have, but it did.
Q7 Ann Clwyd: Is there any point then in the EU
human rights dialogue, or the UK human rights
dialogue, with China? Is it best that those dialogues
do not take place?
Professor Tsang: We have to have the dialogue with
China. It is important, even though the reality is that,
in terms of the substance, it might not amount to all
that much, but symbolism does matter, as does how it
would be seen by a huge number of people in China
and whether we really stand by what we believe in.
Here what we are trying to do is not necessarily to
preach democracy to China; the Chinese will choose
what political systems they want to have. However,
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Ev 4 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
when they do so, they want to know how democracies
behave. They want to know whether democracies
actually stand by the principles that democracies say
they stand by. And we do stand by human rights, and
if we are being seen as not standing by human rights
we are discrediting the idea of democracy.
While changes can only happen in China, the opening
up in the relationship between China and the outside
world has had a huge impact on how everything has
developed in China in the last 30 years or so. Thinking
in China has changed; people’s perspectives have
changed. Ideas that previously were impossible for
people to contemplate exploring as experiments or
ideas that might perhaps be applicable to China have
become applicable, because of the huge interchange
in everyday contact, in Western ideas being available
in China and in Chinese being able to travel outside
China and see for themselves, go to our universities,
have debates with our students and professors, and
they develop their own ideas. We should continue to
do that.
Q8 Ann Clwyd: Of course, critics in this country
always feel that the Government should be more
robust in their exchanges on human rights, and that
they are not robust enough.
Professor Tsang: It always depends on what one
means by being “more robust”. We have to understand
the Chinese system for what it is. It is still
fundamentally a Leninist system. I personally came
up with the concept of “a consultative Leninism”,
which is different from the old-fashioned MarxistLeninist system, but it is still fundamentally a Leninist
system, which has clear red lines that it will not allow
anybody to cross. When that happens, they will
respond very strongly.
So, if it is a matter of outside powers trying to impose
certain standards of human rights on China, it simply
will not be acceptable to the Chinese Government;
they will not respond to that in any positive way. But
on the other hand, there are plenty of things that we
can do that our Chinese friends will pick up and they
will not necessarily find them as being threatening to
the survival of the regime. Within that framework,
they will make changes that will have a significant
impact on how human rights are being respected on
an everyday basis in China.
There is not a lot that we can do with political
dissidents in China, but in general terms—about
everyday human rights situations—we can. That is
where I think we are delivering more results in those
areas. I wouldn’t say that we are not being robust; just
picking a fight, a verbal quarrel, with the Chinese will
not necessarily get us the result, even though it may
mean better soundbites for human rights
organisations.
Q9 Chair: I am sorry to interrupt. Two of us have to
leave for 15 minutes, so Ann Clwyd is going to take
the Chair. Please forgive us, and do continue with
your answer, Professor Breslin.
Professor Breslin: Going back to what I said before,
if you look at human rights reports in terms of the
number of people being arrested and so on, then yes,
it does not seem to have resulted in any great benefits
at all. However, there is an increase in dialogue; there
is a space, and that space can open or close. At the
moment, within Chinese universities, for example, I
think it is tightening a little and the space for open
debate and pushing for alternatives has closed a bit.
But history suggests that it will go in waves. Just
maintaining a dialogue may not seem very dramatic
or make many news headlines, but it does slowly have
results in exchanging ideas and opening societies.
(Ann Clwyd in the Chair)
Q10 Andrew Rosindell: If I could turn to the issue
of Hong Kong, yesterday, we saw 400,000 protesters
demonstrating on the streets, waving the former
British colonial flag of the territory and demanding
democratic reforms in that former British colony. Do
you feel, 16 years after the handover of Hong Kong
to the People’s Republic of China, that the UK has
properly discharged its obligations to the citizens of
Hong Kong, many of whom still consider themselves
to be British and have huge loyalty and affection for
the Queen and for the United Kingdom?
Professor Tsang: I should perhaps declare an interest:
I was born in Hong Kong and lived my first 21 years
there before I moved to this country to study. I then
stayed on and lived here. Hong Kong is a very
difficult issue for us. I totally understand why people
in Hong Kong would be raising the colonial flag. The
affection for this country is very genuine, as is the
acceptance of the values that this country represents.
However, raising the colonial flag, or a modified
version of it, in Hong Kong, is as unwise as it could
be in the situation in which Hong Kong finds itself.
The Chinese Government are very sensitive, rightly or
wrongly, about the British connection to Hong Kong.
They are prone to conspiracy theories, and would be
thinking that perhaps there is a British “black hand”
somewhere behind that is stirring things up. That is
not going to make the Chinese Government willing to
allow Hong Kong a greater degree of freedom and a
faster pace of democratisation at all.
The one thing about the Chinese Communist Party
and democracy is that it is not opposed to democracy,
it just wants to make sure that all the results are
known and approved by it beforehand. But Hong
Kong wants a version of democracy like ours, where
the electoral result is uncertain by its very nature. That
is not something that the Communist Party is willing
to accept, but if they think that Hong Kong wants to
have a degree of self-government and a higher degree
of accountability of the Government to the local
people, without in any way posing a challenge or
threat to Chinese sovereignty in Hong Kong and the
security of the Communist Party in all Chinese
territories, then they would actually be more willing
to accept that. To revive nostalgia about the colonial
period simply is not going to set the Chinese
Government at ease and therefore is not going to
deliver the results that people in Hong Kong would
like. I know that it is counterintuitive, but there you
are.
Q11 Andrew Rosindell: Do you feel that maybe
Beijing is misjudging this and that if they were to
allow Hong Kong to strengthen its links with Britain
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 5
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
and with the Commonwealth, that that would not only
settle things in Hong Kong and make the people of
Hong Kong feel happier, but give China a voice
elsewhere? For instance, if Hong Kong were to be
encouraged to join the Commonwealth, where it
would feel very much at home—many of the
traditions in Hong Kong emanate from Britain—it
would feel part of the Commonwealth family. Do you
not think that it is time to allow the people of Hong
Kong that opportunity, which has been given to every
other former British colony?
Professor Tsang: What you say, sir, makes perfectly
good sense, it just will not be acceptable to the
Chinese Government. I completely agree with you
that if the Chinese Government would give Hong
Kong a complete free hand, through autonomy, to
develop its own political systems as people in Hong
Kong would like it to do, people in Hong Kong would
feel a stronger sense of Chinese patriotism. There is
no real contradiction in Hong Kong developing a
different political system from what is in place in
China and still feel very proud of being Chinese and
being able to help with the development of Mother
China and all that. Stronger connections with the
Commonwealth, in whichever form, will not
necessarily be exclusive to that development. I have
absolutely no difficulties agreeing with that, but for
the Chinese Government to contemplate that, I think
is just completely, with all due respect, unrealistic.
They will not think that; they are not capable of
thinking it in those terms.
idea that force might actually need to be used was sort
of parked to one side, rather than being taken more
seriously, so that has changed. But the Chinese
Government have also come to realise that the
democratic politics in Taiwan mean that they cannot
be sure that, after the next election in Taiwan, the new
Government in Taiwan will necessarily be one run by
the Kuomintang and therefore more willing to engage
in dialogue with the mainland. The Chinese
Government say that they are willing to engage in
dialogue with the Democratic Progressive Party in
Taiwan, but there is a precondition, which is that the
DPP will have to accept a one China principle. When
the Kuomintang is in power in Taiwan, the issue can
easily be fudged, because the Kuomintang has its own
version of the one China principle. It is just a different
version of the one China principle being expounded
by the PRC in Beijing. Because they talk a language
where they can easily talk past each other, they do not
have to challenge it and there is no need to deal with
it. Because the DPP is not willing to buy into that
dialogue explicitly—implicitly, in fact, the DPP does
accept that, but it is not willing to accept that
explicitly—the Chinese Communist Party has a
problem with that, and there is a basic mistrust of a
DPP Government. So things can change.
Q12 Andrew Rosindell: In your view, is China being
reasonable or acting like a bully?
Professor Breslin: Can I add something which
perhaps comes back to your previous question?
Beijing’s policy towards Hong Kong is not just about
Hong Kong, it is about Taiwan as well. There is
always a thought to sovereignty and making sure that
Taiwan does not act like an independent sovereign
state. Membership of organisations that are not
organisations for states, such as the World Trade
Organisation, which is for an economic territory, is
one thing, so you can have Hong Kong and Taiwan
under some obscure name also being members of the
World Trade Organisation alongside China. When it
comes to something that makes it look like a separate
independent state, where Beijing does not have the
ultimate monopoly of authority, it is simply not on the
agenda as far as China is concerned.
Q14 Mr Roy: So in 2016 you expect, if the DPP are
elected, to see a change in attitude?
Professor Tsang: If there is going to be a change in
Government in Taiwan, with the DPP in power in
2016, I think the Chinese Government will re-adopt
the policy it had from 2000 to 2008, which was to
watch the acts of the Government in Taiwan and listen
to its words to see whether it was doing anything that
could be seen as transgressing China’s bottom line.
Some of the things that are being tolerated, for
example, the current de facto diplomatic truce
between Taiwan and China, might well be withdrawn.
A few of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies probably would
be quite willing to switch recognition if the Chinese
Government says that it is time for them to do so.
Things can change and things can get rather more
tense, but it does not necessarily mean that that
relationship will immediately get into a crisis point.
The economic relationship between the two is now
very strong. It would be extremely expensive and
painful, even for China, for that relationship to be
upset. It would be fatal for Taiwan, but it would be
extremely expensive for China.
Q13 Mr Roy: Over the last 10 years, there has been
a huge change in the relationship between Taiwan and
the mainland and an awful lot more people-to-people
contact. Has the fact that there is now so much
dialogue between people made a difference to the
political attitude in China?
Professor Tsang: The easing of tension between
China and Taiwan since 2008 has certainly had a
major impact on how their relationship is being
handled. Between 2000 to 2008, that relationship got
very, very tense and the risk that force may have had
to be used increased. I do not think it got to a point
where it would have been used, but it was certainly
increasing. After 2008, that tension reduced and the
Q15 Mr Roy: The United Kingdom has bilateral
relations with China and with Taiwan. Does that cause
a problem?
Professor Breslin: As long as everybody accepts the
formal position of one China, you can push at the
edges of that in the good times, like now, in terms of
what you actually do. As long as you maintain the
formal position that there is only one China, only one
state and only one true representative of China, you
can fudge around the edges. It is when you start
suggesting, implying or even hinting that maybe there
is one China and one Taiwan, or maybe there are two
Chinas, that you change the nature of the game
entirely.
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Ev 6 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
Q16 Mr Roy: What are those changes? I remember
during the Olympics last year that China complained
straight away when the Taiwanese flag was put up in
Regent Street. Is that the type of thing?
Professor Breslin: Exactly. In the Olympics, it is not
Taiwan as a state that is taking part. In the World
Trade Organisation, it is called the Separate Customs
Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu
(Chinese Taipei). As long as you play the diplomatic
niceties, you can have the relationships without
having the formal diplomatic relationship.
However, many years ago, in the International Studies
Association, an academic body, there was a
representative, I think, of the Taiwan Political Studies
Association, and that caused problems. If it had been
called the Chinese Political Studies Association
(Taiwan), that would have been fine, but calling it the
Taiwan Political Studies Association indicates that
Taiwan is a separate entity, which is not okay. You
have to create the formal diplomatic position, and then
people are prepared to be a bit more flexible as long
as you accept that formal situation.
Professor Tsang: I would just add that there is this
objective dimension to it, which is the British policy,
and there I think we are all on the same page—
depoliticise it and do it as a practical matter, which
HMG is already doing. Then there is the context of it,
which depends on the relationship between China and
Taiwan. In the post-2008 context, the UK offering
visa-free entry to passport holders from Taiwan has
not caused a problem, because it has been seen and
accepted as a practical matter with no political
connotations or implications. If that had happened
before 2008, however, the chance that Beijing might
have raised objection to it and might have seen this
non-political act from a political angle would have
been substantially higher. It is not entirely up to us,
but we have to do the right things. Up to this point,
the Foreign Office has got that right.
Q17 Sandra Osborne: You have talked about the
influence of Chinese people going abroad and seeing
what it is like in other countries. Have there been any
repercussions for the Chinese Government from the
uprisings related to the Arab Spring? I know that the
new leader, for example, has put emphasis on anticorruption policy, but 90% of the millionaires are
related to higher-up members of the Communist Party.
Could such issues lead to instability in the political
system in China?
Professor Breslin: There are two things we need to
separate out. One is the dissatisfaction that clearly
exists within the Chinese political system and the
other is the impact of the Arab Spring.
Dealing with the first one, if all you ever read that
came out of China were things produced by the
Communist Party’s own research done at the Central
Party school, you could be forgiven for thinking that
this was a country on the verge of revolution. The
Central Party school’s job is to look out for the
dissatisfaction and to try to analyse what is causing it
and its political potential. If you go right back to Jiang
Zemin, you will find leaders talking about how
corruption can bury the Party and that it has created
mistrust between the people and the party. There is a
very clear awareness within the Party itself that the
links between the people and the Party are being
stretched very heavily by things such as corruption
and land sales.
The single biggest source of income for local
governments is selling the right to use land. In 2012,
according to official reports, 22% of all mass
demonstrations—it did not say how many—were
because of land seizures and demolitions, as local
governments kicked people off the land. There was an
effective uprising in Wukan that overthrew the local
government. There is a wide range of dissatisfaction
and people are well aware of corruption, inequality,
inequality of access and land seizures. If you have
been to China recently, one of the interesting things is
that environmental problems are getting closer to the
top of the list. Quite frankly, Beijing is not a place
where you would particularly want to spend a lot of
time, although it is better than it was in February.
There is a whole range of issues. My friend John
Kennedy refers to it as the TV and the window. You
look at the TV and you see this great, rich, prosperous
China with good leaders and growth and stability, but
then you look out the window and see corruption, the
local party cadre’s children behaving as if they are
outwith the law, and environmental problems. At the
moment, the blame is local, so there are all these dots
of disaffection spread around the country. It is almost
as if the regime’s job is to prevent the dots from
joining up and becoming something else. That
problem is there and there is recognition of it.
Whether the much vaunted strategy of dealing with
corruption will actually come up with any great
concrete results, I have my doubts, because we have
heard it so many times.
The Arab Spring is very interesting, because at first
there was concern about it. There were clampdowns
on the internet on discussions about it and there was
a smallish demonstration in Beijing, although it was
difficult to work out who were the demonstrators, who
were the police and who were the journalists trying to
take photographs of the demonstrators and the police.
There was some concern that it would have a spill
over, but I am not sure now that it has not necessarily
acted in the opposite direction in that there was an
editorial in the People’s Daily that said—I am
paraphrasing—“Is that what you want? Is all the chaos
that everybody went through in the Middle East worth
it when you end up with this? You have death and
economic collapse. You end up with no functioning
Government. Is this really what you want?”
One of the things that the CCP has done quite
successfully is establish a discourse of instability, if
you like—that instability is just around the corner and
what we need is a really strong stable party to
maintain stability and to be able to govern the country
and ensure that we don’t fall into chaos, and that we
have the stable political system that you need where
you can obtain your greater economic fortunes. While
that dissatisfaction is still very much there and while
a lot remains to be done, I think one of the key
political reforms that needs to take place is to give
people a voice. Many people within the CCP think
that as well, not multi-party elections but for people
to have a voice. I am not sure that the Arab Spring
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 7
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
moved things in the direction that we might originally
have thought; rather it has refocused attention on the
dangers of chaos, disorder and collapse—the things
that we are seeing at the moment.
Professor Tsang: In terms of corruption, the Party
certainly takes it extremely seriously, which is exactly
why the first thing that Xi Jinping said after he took
power was that he would be anti-corruption. I share
Shaun’s scepticism about how they would deal with it
but I don’t think we should dismiss the efforts to deal
with corruption as pretty irrelevant. You don’t have to
have a campaign to eradicate corruption for it to be
credible. What is being done in China is a campaign
to contain corruption, to eliminate ostentatious display
of corrupt acts and the benefits of ill-gotten gains. If
people suffered from a relatively low level of
corruption without that kind of ostentatious display
then that discontent could be contained. That is
basically what the Party is trying to do. The
indications so far are that it is effective and having the
desired effect—up to now.
On the Arab Spring I would agree with what was said.
Over time the opposite effect has been delivered.
Perhaps that might be related to Chinese policy in the
Middle East. Where I think we should draw a lesson
from the Arab Spring was right in the heady days of
the Arab Spring when things were going well, when
the protests were being organised in Beijing, and how
it was nipped in the bud when there were suggestions
that those of us who shared the sentiments of Cairo
and Tunisia should take a walk in the centre of
Beijing. The Government immediately sent many
times more police officers on to the streets than there
were demonstrators, showing quite clearly that the
means, the political will and the instruments to deal
with this effectively right away and very powerfully
are right there—“Don’t even think about it.”
Essentially it was a Dirty Harry moment—“Make my
day”. They did not make the Party’s day and that is
something that we have to learn in terms of how they
manage that kind of challenge if and when they see
it emerging.
Professor Breslin: Do we need to move on? I would
like to mention briefly two things that could spark
trouble over the next year.
Q18 Chair: Yes, please do.
Professor Breslin: One is property bubbles bursting,
and the connected issue of banks and investment trusts
going bust. We could see some localised, but quite
big, problems if investment trusts and connected
property bubbles burst.
Q19 Rory Stewart: What is China’s view on the
consensus of international foreign policy making?
Since the 1990s the whole theory of international
action is based on ideas of trying to avoid state
fragility, failed states and rogue states and to invest in
governance and the rule of law, eliminate poverty and
so on. These are the kind of arguments that underlie
any international appeal to China, whether we are
talking about Afghanistan, Syria, Libya or subSaharan Africa. Does China accept those arguments
and, if not, does China have a radically different view
of the international system and what the obligation of
international actors should be?
Professor Breslin: There has been a lot of debate
within academic circles and in China about the global
order and China’s place within it and what it should
look like. Some of those debates include people
talking more in Western conceptions of global order.
What we saw over Libya was the high point of the
manifestation of a growing move towards consensus.
It was not just that China did not veto the no-fly zone,
which was, I think UN Security Council resolution
1973; China voted in favour of referring Libya to the
International Criminal Court, which I think was
resolution 19711. In some ways, that was a high
point of the movement towards this consensus, but
what happened in Libya, someone told us, was that it
killed the baby at birth.
There was no desire in China for regime change. They
might have been prepared to bend and push and fudge
the concept of sovereignty, but since then we have
seen a move back and a bit of a backlash against those
who were pushing the more liberal global world
order line.
Q20 Rory Stewart: Who are the Chinese foreign
policy thinkers who are thinking about what the global
order should look like and where the world should be
going, regardless of what role China plays in
creating it?
Professor Breslin: There is a range of people thinking
about that. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China
has, I think it is fair to say, a not particularly high
status in the hierarchy of the bureaucracy. The leading
Chinese diplomat is the state councillor, but he is not
in the Politburo, so he is not in the top 30. There are
a whole load of research think-tanks, such as CICIR,
which is associated with the Security Bureau, and the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. There are also
leading intellectuals at universities, such as Tsinghua
University, who are perhaps individually connected,
or have been individually connected, to specific
leaders.
A lot of it is driven not by thinking about the global
order, but by thinking about China. You cannot get
away from that. It is a country where you do not think
about the global order without thinking about China
within the global order. As China’s own commercial
interests expand across the world, it is forcing a
rethink about absolute conceptions of non-interference
and sovereignty, because it is no coincidence that
China behaved in one way over Libya, where it had
significant economic interests, and in another way
over Sudan, where the oil companies were significant
drivers of policy. China is now behaving in an entirely
different way over Syria, where it does not have the
same economic interests.
A lot of it is driven by a need to respond to the reality
of the actualities of China’s international interactions
these days, which are no longer simply diplomatic or
at the United Nations. They are in terms of big
companies and small independent traders expanding
China’s economic contacts and reach across the world.
It has left Chinese thinking, at times, struggling to
catch up with reality.
1
Note by witness: The reference should be to resolution 1970
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Ev 8 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
Professor Tsang: The Chinese fundamentally do not
accept humanitarian interventionism, which came
forward at the end of the Cold War. Basically, they
still see humanitarian interventionism as an instrument
of the Americans. It is therefore American
interventionism, so they simply do not accept it. That
may or may not be an accurate analysis of the
situation on the ground, but that is how they see it.
In terms of interventionism, they uphold the principle
of non-interventionism, but the application is very
selective. In many ways, it is going back to a pre-UN
situation of how national interest is calculated and put
forward. The rest of the world—I am referring to the
leading great powers—have had a go and have been
dominant, but the Chinese have not had that yet and
they feel they should have a right to the same. You
have a bit of a contradiction there.
Q21 Rory Stewart: Just to push this specifically,
how would China, aside from the question of the
United States, view Afghanistan or Syria? What
would China think its interests were in that kind of
country? What kind of state would they like to
achieve? Are they interested in stability? Are they
interested in regional stability or simply in being able
to extract minerals? What would be the vision of a
Chinese policy maker in relation to that?
Professor Tsang: It is context driven. In terms of
Afghanistan, the Chinese were happy over the last 10
years when the Americans were completely tied down
and sucked into it, with the American defence agenda
completely distorted by the Afghanistan involvement.
That was fine, but they will have to rethink once the
Americans get out of Afghanistan, when the situation
on the ground in Afghanistan will change; they will
have to think about how much more involvement they
have. At the moment, the Chinese benefit in terms of
extraction of minerals and similar activities in
Afghanistan more than any other leading power in the
world, without actually having to pay much for it.
That works, but the context is going to change.
They are not unhappy with how the situation is in
Syria at the moment, particularly since the Russians
are taking the lead and therefore carrying all the blame
for what is going on in Syria; but fundamentally,
Chinese policy is not different from that of the
Russians.
Q22 Rory Stewart: To what extent does China see
its own domestic economic and political system as a
model that could be exported? Is it looking at other
countries for people to run systems similar to the
Chinese system?
Professor Breslin: The Chinese model, as I see it, is
not the projection of a model, but the negation of a
model, if that makes sense. I think the Chinese model
is: “Don’t follow A, B, C, D, E, F, G”—what we
did—probably because it is impossible to do that.
“But what we have done is show that you do not have
to do it how they are telling you to do it. We are not
telling you to liberalise; we are not linking aid; we are
not telling you to do this; we are not doing that. You
do what works best for you.” It is not the promotion
of a specific alternative model that you can pick up
off the shelf and put down and follow, but what it
is very clearly saying is that the Western model, the
Washington consensus, is delegitimised: “We have
legitimised alternative ways of doing things. We are
now saying that we will be a partner with you and we
will not tell you what to do. So if you want to go and
develop your own system, you can.” It is not a model
so much as almost a metaphor.
Q23 Mike Gapes: What you are saying is that the
Chinese are not driven by an ideological position with
regard to their foreign policy or investments abroad;
it is much more commercially driven. Because of the
pragmatic approach, they will basically not raise
questions about human rights or other matters. They
will simply get their commercial interests and
enterprises into whichever country without any
qualifications, and they do not have any hang-ups
about that. Is that what you are saying?
Professor Breslin: Not without any qualifications;
there are some qualifications. Increasingly, Chinese
companies want to make sure that their investments
do not go pear-shaped. They want guarantees and they
are looking for legal structures that ensure their
money is safe. Of course, Taiwan is an issue, although
as China has recently engaged the Caribbean states in
a much bigger way, a number of the countries that
recognise Taiwan have been invited to investment
meetings and so on.
(Richard Ottaway in the Chair)
Q24 Mike Gapes: So there is a strategic political
issue as well?
Professor Breslin: There are two, maybe three,
strategic dimensions. One is that you need to make
sure the numbers count in the game of global
governance, so if there are ever votes in the United
Nations condemning China, you want people on your
side. There is an element of that. Part of it is an
element of—a feeling of—national pride or national
image promotion. If that is national pride and image
promotion sometimes at the expense of Western
powers, that is not so bad. There is a real attempt in
the way that China deals with other developing
countries to promote a preferred national image of
China as being very different from the West, as not a
coloniser—not unequal asymmetric economic
relationships, but a country that will deal with you as
an equal, and is also a developing state that was
colonised. There is an element of ideology, or you
could call it national image promotion.
Again and again, the evidence from talking to people,
particularly within the political and foreign policy
administration in Beijing, is how difficult they are
actually finding it to control the economic activities
that are increasingly taking place, either driven by the
big state-owned enterprises, because they are big and
powerful, or increasingly by a number of smaller
economic actors who are outwith their control. At
times, people complain that the image of China has
been tarnished by economic actors they cannot
control.
Professor Tsang: There may not be a specific
ideology that the Chinese promote, but their approach
is not completely non-ideological. There is an idea
that they need to protect the right of non-democratic
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 9
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
systems to be totally acceptable as a legitimate system
of government in the world. The idea that the end of
history is democracy as the system for all is something
they fundamentally reject. That is a fairly ideological
position to take, even though they are not actually
advocating a particular ideology in terms of exporting
the Chinese model to the West.
There are also elements of a definitional issue—that
certain actions being taken by the Chinese
Government are, by definition, not imperialist, not
colonialist and not exploitative. Whatever those
actions are on the ground, there may be situations in
African countries when African people, in contrast to
their Governments, might take the view that the
Chinese are behaving like the European imperialists
of the 19th century, but the Chinese will say that,
because they are Chinese, by definition that simply
cannot be true.
Professor Breslin: It is a non-normative, normative
position. It is a normative position that says there
should be no normative position, which by definition
makes it a normative position.
Q25 Mike Gapes: In terms of the consequences for
the relationship between the UK and China, we are
both members of the Security Council. We have very
close co-operation on lots of issues, but we have a
completely different value system with regard to
international institutions. The UK seeks to promote
transparency, accountability and good governance,
and the universal human rights agenda going back to
1948 is part of our foreign policy ethos, whether we
uphold it not, whereas China has a completely
different approach. Is that what you are saying?
Professor Breslin: Yes. Again, it might be different
on the ground. Not only is it completely different, it
is deliberately explicitly shaped and created against
the Western concept; it is occidentalism. It is
explicitly saying, “They do that, and we don’t.”
Q26 Mike Gapes: That is a problem for the UK,
particularly in Africa, but also in other parts of the
world. The way we approach particular Governments
or regions where there might be internal conflicts or
human rights abuses would be completely different
from the way the Chinese see it.
Professor Breslin: Yes, I think that is right. I come
back to the point that it might not actually be like that
on the ground where Chinese companies go, but the
official foreign policy rhetoric/dialogue/approach
creates a difficult situation. It is easy for us to ask
what does China want from Africa, what does China
want from the Caribbean. More often, we should be
physically asking, “What do you want? What do
Africans and people in the Caribbean want from
China?”, and turn it round the other way. We held a
seminar in Beijing, and it was “no strings attached”
investment.
Q27 Mr Baron: China and Russia often come to the
same position on major foreign policy issues—Libya
and Syria being two recent examples. They have an
uneasy bilateral agreement. Can you explain how
China gets to its position? What role, if any, does
Russia play in its thinking? What does the UK have
to do to tease China in its direction, when it comes to
the UN and considerations relating to, say, Iran or
Syria?
Professor Tsang: The relationship between China and
Russia happens to coincide in terms of their
calculations of interest at the time. I do not think that
we shall be able to entice the Chinese away from the
Russians. The Chinese would have taken the positions
that they are taking over Syria anyway, and if they
had thought the Russians would take a much more
robust position over Libya, they might well have taken
that position, too. The big difference between the
Russians and the Chinese is that the Chinese
Government would like China to be loved and
admired. The Russian Government under Putin is
more interested in asserting itself, showing that if we
cannot get things done, at least we can obstruct things.
Often, the Chinese would like to do the same thing,
but they are not really quite as willing to pay the
reputational price that the Russians are simply,
happily paying, and therefore there is that partnership.
In terms of Iran and countries like North Korea—I
think North Korea is a slightly different situation—
the Chinese are not really going to be amenable to
what we are trying to push for. Their interest there is
primarily one of energy security and also making sure
that a country like Iran is not being simply bullied by
“the West” into a certain course of action, which
would then be bad for countries like China, for that
informal solidarity of non-democratic states.
Realistically, I do not think there is a lot we can do to
get the Chinese to be—
Q28 Mr Baron: Can I just press you? Then we must
bring in Professor Breslin. Is it more or is it a
combination? In which case, which has the upper
hand? Is it a view, case by case, of the individual
issues, or is it what you are perhaps suggesting—that
it is an alliance facing the West, because of the powers
they see on the other side of the equation?
Professor Tsang: For us, we have to deal with it on a
case-by-case basis. There is no reason and no point in
taking an ideological approach on something like this,
because if we did we would be going back to what
the Chinese often say: “That is the old Cold War
mentality being resurrected”. We do not have that.
That is gone—finished—but they are still often trying
to see things in that light. The only way we can try to
engage with them is on a case-by-case basis and put
the merit of the case forward, and make the most of
the fact that they want to be accepted, embraced and
respected. Therefore there is more scope, in that sense,
to engage with them and persuade, than we have with
the Russians, when their interest is in fact to show
that they can obstruct. We just have to ensure that if
you want the Chinese to be on board, they are part of
that process—who will carry a lot of the credit for a
good policy being delivered.
Professor Breslin: I do not have too much to add to
that. I think China is actively seeking what we might
call alliances of the dissatisfied, so that it does not
stand out as being just dissatisfied on its own. The
BRICs are an example of that, relations with Russia
are another one. But I really think it comes down to
the relationship, and how strong that relationship is
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Ev 10 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
depends on China’s material and strategic interests in
each individual case. It has direct, specific energyrelated strategic interests in Iran that it does not have
in Syria, which means that perhaps there is more of
an opportunity to explore those energy situations in
the Iranian case than in Syria, where I think it is
difficult, because—
Q29 Mr Baron: So moving this to the East and the
South China Sea territorial disputes, you are
suggesting that this is more a tilt at the US, perhaps,
than it is to do with eastern Asian regional politics.
What is the mix, as far as you can see it?
Professor Breslin: In the South China Sea?
Mr Baron: Yes.
Professor Breslin: Perhaps this is pushing things too
far, but I think what happened after the financial crisis
was that there was a renewed self-confidence. I
slightly disagree about the new leadership. I think that
new confidence was there in the Chinese leadership
that emerged during that period, and a greater
willingness, at that point, to assert what the Chinese
call their core interests: that the time had come for
China to start asserting its core interests, where the
foreign powers—particularly, in this case, the United
States, really had no right in saying, “This is our
sphere of influence. This is our back yard. We are
going to now try to be increasingly the power within
this area.” For a country like the UK, it is difficult to
be an actor within that power constellation, because
we do not seem to have the same strategic
relationship.
Professor Tsang: For something like this, we have to
remember that the Communist Party has a monopoly
on the truth and a monopoly on history. It is the result
of that monopoly which guides it in its particular
actions.
If you take a map and look at the infamous nine-dash
line, it is hard to see how that could be historic
Chinese territory, but they believe in it because the
history they have internalised makes them think that
is really the case. That is how they can see that as
genuine proto core interests. They did not say that this
is core interests; they allow possible deniability. They
allow people to assert that and, if all those statements
are not challenged, they become accepted by the
international community and then become core
interests.
Hillary Clinton challenged that in Hanoi in 2010 and
the Chinese Government backed off from that. But,
having done so, they are still putting themselves in a
situation where the nationalism narrative has become
so important that the Government cannot back off
from it. So they got into a situation where, from the
regional perspective, they have the image of being a
regional bully, which is not what the Chinese
Government would like to project in terms of their
image in that part of the world.
What Xi Jinping has done in the last couple of months
is to try to get it into a more nuanced way and adopt
the principle of the united front in dealing with SouthEast Asia and ASEAN, which, essentially, is to
highlight how important ASEAN’s relationship with
China is, and how much China values its relationship
with ASEAN. But there is only one member of
ASEAN, namely the Philippines, which has been
causing trouble in that relationship, which is over that
little band of islands. But we have been very
reasonable.
The fundamental principle of the united front is to
identify friends from enemies. In the simplest form,
the region is divided into three parts: you have me;
you have, on the opposite, the principal contradiction;
and the intermediates are in between. Once you can
identify your principal enemy, you win over as many
as possible in the intermediate zone, you destroy your
enemy and you move on to your second enemy, who
becomes the principal enemy, and you repeat that
process until you have all friends and no enemies.
That is what they are doing in the South China Sea.
Q30 Sir John Stanley: I wish to declare an interest.
A fortnight ago, I attended the annual meeting of the
UK-Korea Forum in South Korea. The visit was
funded partly by the UK-Korea Forum and partly by
the Korea Foundation.
Since the accession of Kim Jong-un to what I would
describe as the family throne in Pyongyang, there has
been a material toughening of the Chinese position
towards North Korea, notably in the United Nations
and in the PRC’s position on UN Security Council
resolutions. I have two questions to put to you. First,
how far do you believe that China is prepared to go,
beyond where it is now, in increasing still further the
pressure on the DPRK to ensure peace in the Korean
peninsula and, in particular, to try to end the nuclear
weapon capability of North Korea?
My second question is: do you consider that, whatever
the degree of pressure exerted by the PRC, Kim Jongun and his regime are, or are not, ultimately able to
resist it, and will resist it in order to pursue their
policies at whatever humanitarian cost to the people
of North Korea?
Professor Tsang: Peace, definitely. The nuclearisation
of North Korea is the publicly articulated policy, but
they are not prepared to pay the price for it. Peace and
stability in the Korean peninsula is clearly in China’s
national interest. They clearly want that—there really
is not much doubt about that. They would have
preferred North Korea not to have developed nuclear
capability, but to remove that is a very different issue
and that is something that the North Korean
Government and Kim Jong-un understand.
It is not so much a matter of Chinese national interest
in the conventional sense. The crux of the matter is
not North Korean refugees coming into China, should
there be an implosion or something like that. The real
crux of the matter is that there are only three other
quasi-Leninist regimes left in the world, of which
Cuba is a bit too far and not so relevant. Vietnam is
not exactly a friend of China. North Korea is the only
one there is. Therefore, the risk of that ending and the
implications for the Communist Party’s rule in China
is too much to contemplate.
That is what defines the limits of what the Chinese
are willing to do. They will be very happy to restart a
six-party talks process, whether it delivers the results
or not. But to go that extra mile to secure the
disarming of North Korea of its nuclear weapons
requires something that I do not think the Chinese
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 11
2 July 2013 Professor Shaun Breslin and Professor Steve Tsang
Government are prepared to do. With North Koreans
understanding the limit, there is therefore a limit on
the pressure the Chinese can have on North Korea. If
the North Koreans believe the Chinese would go that
extra mile, then I think the North Koreans will behave
as the Chinese require them to. At the moment, I don’t
think they will.
Professor Breslin: North Korea was a deal. The deal
was that China would prevent the West and the United
States from imposing extra hard sanctions on North
Korea. In return, North Korea had to allow China to
show that it was capable of guaranteeing peace and
controlling North Korea. When North Korea has
tested missiles it has let China down and it has almost
been a failure of Chinese foreign policy. The deal was,
“If we stop them doing this; then you don’t do that.”
I think you are exactly right. It is a really nasty foreign
policy situation for the PRC to be in. They don’t want
the North Koreans to do what they have been doing,
because that makes it look as though they are not able
to guarantee peace or become the main arbiters of
peace without the West intervening. At the same time,
they cannot be seen to be backing the United States,
because that would create huge problems for domestic
politics and the Chinese world view about the
hegemony of the Western powers.
The idea of disarming North Korea or North Korea
collapsing or North Korea becoming occupied by the
United States or South Korea is not very palatable
either. It has left the Chinese in quite a difficult
position. However, I understand that, although there
were not many high-level talks after the assumption
of the family throne, as you say, they have now
stepped up a little bit. Perhaps the Chinese harder
words have generated some response from
Pyongyang.
Q31 Sir John Stanley: Is there not another key
dimension to this in Beijing? If the DPRK continues
with its nuclear weapon capability, in Beijing they
must surely calculate that there could come a point
where the Japanese decide to change their non-nuclear
policy. Is that not becoming an ever-greater concern
to the Chinese, particularly as, according to all the
assessments in the public domain, the Japanese
nuclear breakout could be achieved in quite short
order?
Professor Breslin: It is a real concern in Beijing that
it legitimises theatre missile defence being expanded
in Japan; that it legitimises a rethink of the peace
constitution; that it legitimises a move towards a
stronger military presence—absolutely. It is a real
headache for Beijing in those terms, as you have said.
Professor Tsang: I disagree with that. I think the
Chinese have huge mistrust of the Japanese. They are
always talking about Japanese re-militarisation and
such things. However, they know that unless Article
9 in Japan is changed, that is not going to happen.
They do know that the Americans are not going to
allow Japan to acquire nuclear weapons, even though
the Japanese can have that capability relatively
quickly.
Professor Breslin: It does not have to be nuclear
weapons to be a major threat.
Professor Tsang: Well, the Chinese know the
Japanese rules of engagement very well. In the way
that they are managing the East China Sea maritime
disputes, the Chinese have totally used to their
advantage the Japanese rules of engagement, in terms
of what they can or cannot actually do. For example,
the locking of radars on Japanese destroyers—they
knew that the Japanese could not actually respond.
Professor Breslin: At the moment.
Professor Tsang: And they knew the Japanese could
not reveal the information in terms of how they
established that the Chinese had locked their radars
on the Japanese.
Chair: I thank you both very much indeed. It has been
a very helpful session to us and a lot of use. Thank
you for your time; it is much appreciated.
Examination of Witness
Witness: Mr Nigel Inkster, Director, Transnational Threats and Political Risk, International Institute for
Strategic Studies, gave evidence.
Q32 Chair: May I welcome Mr Nigel Inkster,
Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at
the International Institute for Strategic Studies? Thank
you very much for coming. Is there anything that you
wanted to say by way of an opening statement? I have
a general first question if you would prefer it.
Mr Inkster: I am happy just to take questions.
Q33 Chair: From a foreign policy and security point
of view, has Britain got its relationship with China
right?
Mr Inkster: I am not entirely sure that we could be
doing things very differently from the way that we
are. I read with interest the report produced by the
Foreign Office for your Committee, which I thought
was a very workmanlike document, but failed perhaps
to make the point that whereas the United Kingdom
sees the relationship with China as one of its key
bilateral relationships, the converse does not
necessarily apply to the same degree. As Professor
Breslin said, the way China looks at a country such
as the United Kingdom is very context-dependent;
there is no single perception and no single
relationship.
In the past, together with other European countries,
our collective attitude towards China—particularly
during the 1990s when they were keeping their heads
down and effectively eschewing a foreign policy or
even a defence policy—probably did not do us too
many favours. We sometimes adopted a rather
patronising approach in areas such as human rights;
we perhaps made that too salient a factor in our
overall approach.
The reality is that when one looks at what we want
from China, we come across increasingly as the
demandeur here. China has other options; we do not
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Ev 12 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Mr Nigel Inkster
have any other option but to deal with China and to
make a variety of accommodations. I sense that there
is a greater element of realism coming into our
approach—a necessarily more pragmatic approach to
dealing with China that I think simply reflects the
relative balance of power between the two countries.
Q34 Chair: The Prime Minister famously met with
the Dalai Lama last year. How serious a problem is
that? Is it a storm in a teacup?
Mr Inkster: It was perhaps less of a storm in a teacup
than it has been in the past. We were pretty much put
in the deep freeze for about 18 months, with an almost
total ban on top-level contact. That said, quite a lot of
business was being done on a day-to-day level that
did not get affected by that decision, but we were a
long time in the deep freeze—longer than we have
ever been—and that perhaps should give us some
pause for thought. I agree with Professor Tsang that,
at the end of the day, the United Kingdom must
maintain the right to talk to who it wants to talk to,
but—as with all these things to do with China—there
are ways of dealing with these situations.
Q35 Chair: Turning to cyber-security, there is widely
perceived to be some sort of threat to the United
Kingdom from Chinese behaviour in this field. Is that
a fair comment?
Mr Inkster: Yes, to a degree, but we need to bear in
mind the Chinese perspective; they see themselves as
very much under threat in this regard. This is one of
those areas where, of course, all of a sudden we
become, so to speak, handmaidens of the United
States—or rather partners of the United States—in a
situation of global cyber-domination. The impression
of that has simply been reinforced by all the
revelations made by Edward Snowden in recent days.
The Chinese themselves have a considerable sense of
vulnerability here. The way the world is wired is very
much dictated by the USA, and, to a surprising
degree, by the UK. The software and much of the
engineering design for the internet is Western,
although increasingly the manufacture is taking place
in China. I think the Chinese feel at a significant
disadvantage. There are still elements of the Chinese
leadership who appear to be convinced that the United
States has a kill switch, and can basically cut off the
internet and deprive them of access. So all those
factors need to be taken into account when one looks
at this.
The other side of the coin is that the internet has given
the Chinese state an unprecedented opportunity to
engage in a kind of bulk collection of intelligence,
which was beyond their wildest imaginings even a
decade ago. It is becoming increasingly clear that if
Chinese leaders ever went naked into the conference
chamber at international meetings or negotiations, that
is manifestly no longer the case. They go into the
conference chamber very well informed indeed.
It is also clear that we are seeing a significant,
industrial-scale,
state-sponsored collection
of
industrial secrets, intellectual property, negotiating
positions and so on. For China, that is imperative for
two reasons: military modernisation and economic
modernisation. In particular, it is imperative that they
avoid the risk of a middle income trap, which they
will face if they are not able to quickly develop worldclass industrial corporations.
Q36 Mike Gapes: Can I ask you about the change
of leadership in China? How should our Government
interpret that change, and what are the implications
for our policy and relations with China?
Mr Inkster: There may not be too much to be read in
the new line-up of the leadership. As was said in the
previous session, we have transitioned away from a
situation in China where one supreme leader was able
to change the direction of overall policy. Deng
Xiaoping had the authority that came from having
been on the long march and from being one of the
founders of the new China, and Jiang Zemin was
visibly Deng Xiaoping’s protégé.
The most recent iterations of leadership no longer
have that capacity; they are the product of a collective
leadership. They get to where they are, first, by
demonstrating
technical
and
administrative
competence, and, secondly, by not rocking the boat.
That is exactly the mistake that Bo Xilai made: he
rocked the boat. He behaved in a way that was not in
conformity with the expectations of collective
leadership, and therefore he had to be brought down.
The last generation of leaders, as was said before,
were engineers. They were people who had come
through the ranks. In many cases, they had done long
years of service in some of the more remote parts of
China. The new generation of leadership is more
driven2. It is the product of a kind of Communist
aristocracy. It is a leadership whose intellectual and
career experiences are more diverse than those of
previous generations. It is more cosmopolitan and
more outward-looking, but still Leninist. That is the
key thing that we need to bear in mind.
As to how one deals with this new generation of
leadership, I think that more than anything what they
want, increasingly demand and are in a position to
demand, is respect. They want recognition that China
is transitioning from being a rule taker to a country
that wants to be a rule maker, that does not just want
to accept the international dispensation that we have
bequeathed, but wants to put its own stamp on this
process in a way that reflects its own interests. A
recognition of that, hard-headed but with a
willingness, obviously, always to defend our own
national interest, is the way to do it.
Q37 Mike Gapes: Would you expect this new
leadership and President Xi to hand the system on in
10 years’ time to their successor essentially
unchanged, or will that transition mean that it will be
a different system?
Mr Inkster: The honest answer is that I don’t know.
As you clearly want an answer to your question I
would suggest that on balance Xi Jinping plans to
hand on a succession in much the same way as his
was done.
Q38 Mike Gapes: What about the implications of the
new media—you have already touched on the rise of
2
Note by witness: Mean to say diverse instead of driven
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 13
2 July 2013 Mr Nigel Inkster
the internet—and the social media for the way that
China is governed and the ability to have stability?
Mr Inkster: China vigorously embraced the internet
because of the obvious potential that it had for
economic developments. At the same time they were
aware of the potential for instability that this new
phenomenon might have. They have worked very
hard, and to date arguably quite successfully, to ensure
that they can keep this within bounds. A young
American researcher, Rebecca MacKinnon, has
coined the term “networked authoritarianism” to
describe the process that has been going on in China.
Essentially the Chinese Government now recognise
that with the internet you have to allow more free
exchange of opinions than was ever acceptable prior
to the arrival of the internet, and to a significant
degree they have made a virtue of this necessity.
China’s wang min—the netizens—in many ways
substitute for the civil society that the Communist
Party has never been willing to allow formally to
become established. They find it very useful. The
Chinese top tiers of leadership take it for granted that
they will be lied to by subordinate tiers of the
bureaucracy. They find it difficult to get the real
picture of what is going on in the country and
monitoring what is being said on the internet is a very
useful way for them to get this. It is a very useful
reality check. It is also a way in which, when popular
indignation with official excesses boils over, the
Communist Party can take credit for being responsive
to the concerns of the citizens. They have become
very adept at engaging in this online debate. They
have their own people, the ‘50 cent party’ as they are
called, who supposedly are paid 50 cents for every
intervention that they make in blogs and so on, on
behalf of the Government. They can ride the wave to
monitor and shape the discussions that are taking
place on the web, but also very quickly close them
down if something is happening that they don’t like
the look of. A single blog that they don’t like the look
of can be closed down very quickly.
Q39 Mike Gapes: Would you agree with the
assessment from the previous session that the Arab
Spring and the implications of that for China are quite
minor, in the sense that the party will not face the fate
that Mubarak had or some other countries might be
going through?
Mr Inkster: The Communist Party, as Professor
Breslin said, obsess ad nauseam about their
vulnerability and the threats arising from instability.
But it remains the case for China that this fear of the
kind of instability and chaos that was experienced
during the Sino-Japanese war, during the Cultural
Revolution and so on—this total anarchy that
prevailed—is something that everyone is anxious to
avoid. Most middle-class urban Chinese have never
had it so good, and the last thing they want to do is
forfeit the lifestyle they have come to acquire. The
argument that the instability to which Arab Springtype events could lead is inherently undesirable and to
be avoided has quite a lot of resonance in the country.
Q40 Mike Gapes: And not just in the Party, but
among the population as a whole?
Mr Inkster: I think so, yes.
Q41 Sandra Osborne: What about corruption? If
people are better off, but they are still seeing
corruption—the new President sees it as enough of a
problem to give it priority—could that cause
instability?
Mr Inkster: It causes periodic popular anger, but, in
the main, what we see in China is a relatively efficient
form of corruption; it is not like the corruption one
sees in a country like, let us say, the Democratic
Republic of Congo. The fact is that the Chinese state
still delivers significant services, significant benefits
and significant improvements to the lives of its people,
notwithstanding the manifest and widespread
corruption that is taking place. So it really is not the
case that people are making large contributions to the
state through taxes or whatever and seeing all that
eaten up by rapacious officials.
Yes, of course, rapacious officialdom is a
preoccupation; it is a particular preoccupation in the
countryside, because this is where ordinary people
come into contact with it. In the urban environment,
this is much less the case; if you live in a Chinese city
and you are middle-class, you probably do not have
quite as much connection with corruption, although
you will have a connection in other ways. For
example, if you want your children to get a good
education, you basically bribe the teachers; if you
want your parents to get good medical treatment, you
bribe the doctors, and so on—this is just the way of
life in China.
That does cause concern. The Party are acutely aware
of the concern it causes, and they are working to
improve the delivery of services to the population.
They have periodic crackdowns on the most egregious
displays of conspicuous consumption. There was an
incident not so long ago where a senior provincial
official was photographed wearing a dozen different
Cartier or Rolex watches. This went viral, and the
official in question was relieved of his post. You get
these periodic injunctions, saying, “Don’t party at the
public expense. Behave in a more modest fashion.”
This normally lasts for a while; once the pressure
eases, people revert to how they were before. This is
one of these things that just comes and goes.
Q42 Sandra Osborne: How do you think the
financial crisis since 2008 has affected China’s
international role, including in terms of the UK?
Mr Inkster: Well, there has been something of a sea
change in China’s perception of itself and in China’s
relative position in the world. As was said in the
previous session, the Washington consensus is
perceived by China to have been a false god. After
many years of being lectured at and told this is what
they have got to work towards, they are now taking
the view that, actually, it is not necessarily the case
that the West knows better than they do. The fact is
that China’s willingness to buy US Treasury bonds
and to continue, effectively, investing in the US
economy has become critical to the stability of the
global financial order. I think it was Hillary Clinton
who said not so long ago, “How do you get tough
with your banker?” The fact is that, once the financial
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Ev 14 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Mr Nigel Inkster
crisis bit, all the countries of Western Europe and the
USA were turning to China and saying in effect, “Do
you have any spare cash?” I think that has put China
in a very different position—a position where the
Chinese feel much greater self-confidence and a much
greater disposition to challenge the established order
and to argue for what they would characterise as a
more diverse international order, one that was more
tolerant of different approaches.
Q43 Sandra Osborne: So, if that is the case, what is
your opinion of this idea that they want to export their
political and economic position to other countries? Do
you think they do or not?
Mr Inkster: No, I do not think they do for a moment.
I do not think they really have an export model of
their political system. As I said, the Chinese line and
what they are arguing for in international forums is
what they call diversity, which is basically a
willingness to tolerate different ways of doing things.
The Chinese economic model is a very pragmatic
model. It really is always only about what works, what
delivers results and what delivers returns on
investment, and politics is much the same. The
Chinese Communist Party is a Leninist party in terms
of its organisation, but from an ideological perspective
it is not really Leninist and it certainly does not want
or require other countries to adopt its way of doing
things.
Q44 Mr Baron: What do you believe is the greatest
risk to the Chinese economic model? Is it an
increasingly aspirant emerging middle class? Is it the
pegging of the yuan to the dollar—against a
strengthening dollar? Or is it something else?
Mr Inkster: The biggest challenge that China’s got at
the moment is a rapidly ageing population, and it is
causing considerable concern. The one-child policy
has had some very perverse demographic
consequences, and the result is that within a very short
period of time we will be in a situation where one
worker will be supporting an inverse pyramid of eight
people who are not productive. That is a cause for
particular concern. I do not think that China is a
country that can seriously contemplate using mass
immigration as a way of resolving this problem—it is
just not going to happen that way—so it will have to
think of other ways of doing it. However, I think that
this is its single biggest concern at the moment.
Q45 Mr Baron: Is there a close second?
Mr Inkster: Market volatility bubbles in property and
stock markets are a particular concern. Stock markets
perform a very different function in China from that
which they perform here, because basically the
Chinese banking system is so dysfunctional that
nobody in their right mind would put their savings
there and so everybody puts their money on the stock
market. That is effectively where their savings go. So,
any major stock market collapse could have serious
consequences. Ditto property bubbles. A lot of people
buy property and then don’t live in it, in order to let
it preserve and increase in value. If value is rapidly
stripped out of it, that can be a real problem.
Q46 Mr Baron: Looking abroad, China has emerged
as a major trade partner and source of overseas aid for
a good number of countries now, particularly when
one looks at Africa. What is your take on whether
China’s overseas aid and economic activities are
driven by commercial interests and objectives, or by
more strategic political objectives?
Mr Inkster: The primary driver for China’s
engagement right around the developing world is
economic, and in particular this absolute hunger—this
imperative—to acquire the raw materials to carry on
the domestic economic development that is essential
to staying afloat. Everything else is purely secondary.
If you look at how China engages in a continent such
as Africa, there is no single model. It is very much
driven by the particular circumstances of the country
concerned and by the particular economic factors.
Where China is told that it cannot bring its own
workers but must employ local workers—as happens,
for example, in South Africa—that is what it does. In
another country where there are no such limitations
on its behaviour, the natural tendency is to bring its
own workers, because it has greater confidence in
them. The other problem that we are seeing, which is
causing increasing concern in Africa, is that the influx
of cheap Chinese manufacture is effectively
preventing many African countries from moving up
the value chain and becoming something other than
exporters of raw materials.
But it is entirely the economic imperative. One sees it
also in Latin America. In the last two dozen years or
so, Argentina’s humid pampas have ceased to be a
place primarily for raising cattle and are now basically
about the production of soya beans. That is a
fundamental transformation driven by China’s
economic and commercial imperatives.
Q47 Mr Baron: May I ask you to reflect on that
answer and move you to the South China Seas? To
what extent can you apply the answer that you gave
to the previous question to the situation there, or is
this more of a trade-off between Asian politics and
relations with the US?
Mr Inkster: It is a complicated three-way relationship.
The big strategic issue for China is its relationship
with the United States in the Western Pacific, an area
that China regards to some degree as its own back
yard and as an essential guarantor of strategic stability.
Certainly China will never feel secure unless it feels
that it controls the terrain up to the so-called first
island chain.
I think China is aggrieved, and to some degree
puzzled, by the fact that the United States is not
prepared to do a deal and effectively agree to split
the Pacific in two—“You take the East, we’ll take the
West”—which is what China would like. Obviously,
that is China’s preferred course, but it is not going to
happen, so we have a situation in which the security
and strategic situation in that part of the world is
driven, first and foremost, by US-China dynamics.
The states of the South-East Asian region are basically
concerned about the risk of becoming Finlandised
under Chinese hegemony, so they have been looking
to the United States for support and security
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 15
2 July 2013 Mr Nigel Inkster
guarantees. Of course, that simply exacerbates the
relationship with China.
As for the South China Sea, yes, I think Professor
Tsang had it pretty much right in the previous session.
China has been driven into a not entirely welcome
move away from a good neighbours policy, which it
was pursuing very effectively until a few years ago,
to one that now looks more like a bad neighbours
policy. One of China’s big perennial problems is its
absence of reliable allies. If the only allies you have
are Pakistan and North Korea, you have a problem in
that area. Everyone else is not an ally; everyone else
is a potential threat. China is very concerned about the
degree, as they see it, to which the United States is
seeking at every turn to constrain China. The US
academic Aaron Friedberg used the term
“congagement”—a combination of constraint and
engagement—to describe US policy towards China,
and I think that pretty much sums it up.
China has been forced into a rather more shrill and
aggressive posture than perhaps it would ideally wish.
That has been driven by a combination of factors,
including pressure from domestic national feeling and
a genuine desire and need to control this territory,
which is effectively its backyard. The resource
dimension is also a factor. There are many issues at
work, but I cannot see China backing down from the
posture that it has taken. The best outcome that the
other participants in this little imbroglio can hope for
is some form of “joint” exploitation of resources.
Q48 Rory Stewart: Can we start on the obvious
chestnut, which is what can the UK and the US do to
encourage China to support a UN resolution on Syria,
particularly in relation to arming and some kind of
political settlement?
Mr Inkster: There is very little that either country can
do at the moment. China was scarred by what
happened over Libya. They thought that they had
signed up for one thing and they found that the
outcome was very different. Part of the effect of that
was to effectively neuter those elements of the
Chinese policy community who were starting to move
in a more favourable direction towards some kind of
international intervention.
Q49 Rory Stewart: To what extent in Britain did we
properly think this through or anticipate this on
Libya? It sometimes seems, as an outsider observing
it, that we behaved as though what we were doing
with Libya was fine and that China and Russia were
being unreasonable in believing that we pushed
beyond what we promised. Should we have seen that?
Should we have anticipated it? How did we get it
wrong?
Mr Inkster: Once we got so far into Libya, the
situation took on its own dynamic and there was
relatively little that could be done to control it, but I
agree that it might have been thought about more
carefully at the outset. It is mooted—I have no reason
to doubt it—that when President Medvedev, as he was
then, was informed of Colonel Gaddafi’s demise, his
reaction was, “We’re next.” I doubt that China’s
response would have been significantly different. This
kind of humanitarian intervention is inherently and
manifestly undesirable from China’s perspective,
because they fear that one day it could be turned
against them.
Q50 Rory Stewart: If someone came to you and said
that the way to force China or Russia to back a UN
resolution was to arm rebels in Syria, because by
doing so you could level the killing field, put pressure
on Bashar and compel Russia and China to the
negotiating table, what would you say?
Mr Inkster: I would say that I do not think it will be
that easy to compel either country to support a
resolution of this kind, but as Professor Tsang said,
China is taking a back seat on this one. Russia is doing
the heavy lifting and China is taking shelter behind
Russia, which has some direct and significant interests
in Syria. In a way, China is arguably more agnostic
about the particular merits of the Syrian case. On the
question of principle, China is unlikely to accede to
anything that would, as they saw it, open the door to
forcible regime change.
Q51 Rory Stewart: In terms of the bigger picture,
there is something that we believe very deeply in the
West. It is a theory that we have developed for 200
years: there is a necessary relationship between
democracy, security, stability, economic growth, the
rule of law and good governance. All those things go
together; we do not see them as mutually exclusive.
We have an Anglo-Saxon view and we look at a
country like China and see problems with poor
governance, corruption, instability and lack of liberty
somehow connected to lack of economic growth. To
what extent does China feel that? If China doesn’t feel
that, are we using exactly the wrong arguments to
China in relation to Syria and Afghanistan, where we
keep trying to say that these are unstable countries
that could pose a threat to you because of the lack of
order and governance? Does China believe that and
should we be saying that to China?
Mr Inkster: If one looks at Afghanistan as a case in
point, China is obviously worried about the potential
for instability from Afghanistan in one particular area,
namely its potential to act as a haven for Uighur
separatists, which it has done, albeit tiny numbers. I
think that China is worried about the threat of Jihadist
terrorism migrating from Afghanistan into China,
which to some small degree it has done; but I think
they see that as a containable problem and I would
argue that they are right, and that the wider instability
is something they can live with. Their calculation is
that at some point people have got to actually develop
the economic resources—minerals—that Afghanistan
now has and China is perfectly placed to do it, when
the situation is right to permit it.
It is not the case, and I do not think that anyone of us
should come away with the view, that China is
inherently hostile to the concept of democracy. This
is not the case; there are many Chinese thinkers within
the Party structure who look very seriously at
democracy and recognise the very real strengths that
the system has in terms of self-correcting
mechanisms. They understand this and they are not
immune to the arguments, but I think they see
democracy as something rather different from how we
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Ev 16 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
2 July 2013 Mr Nigel Inkster
see it. They do not see that democracy necessarily
entails multi-party structures or some of the things
that we tend to assume as being the case. Actually, I
think collectively we made a big mistake by majoring
on democracy as an inherent virtue, whereas
representative government might have been a much
better line to pursue, because that is something they
could certainly relate to.
Q52 Chair: Finally, what is your take on the position
with North Korea at the moment?
Mr Inkster: As was said in the previous session,
China is in a very difficult situation. They do not like
the current regime. Relations between China and
North Korea have often been absolutely poisonous.
Third parties involved in talks in Beijing talk about
high-pitched screaming matches going on between the
Chinese and the North Korean delegations on a
regular basis. Certainly, the North Koreans have some
rather curious ways of demonstrating their gratitude
for the support that they receive from China.
Henry Kissinger made a valid point a while back,
when he observed that we in the West are always
looking for solutions to problems, but for China, those
so-called solutions are often no more than an
admission ticket to a new set of problems that could
turn out to be even more intractable than those that
you think you have got away from. That is epitomised
by the situation in North Korea.
Whatever might come pursuant to a collapse of the
current regime is so uncertain that the Chinese are
simply going to grit their teeth and live with what
they have. In that regard, the Chinese leadership—this
applies more generally—is a pretty risk-averse group
of people. They are not going to go out of their way
to look for problems, much less adventures, in the
foreign policy arena. They want to keep things as
stable and as quiet as they can possibly make them,
and that is pretty much the case with North Korea.
It is a worry for China that the whole North Korean
nuclear issue has led to the USA bringing missile
defence into East Asia to the degree that it has. For
China, that is an existential problem; their calculation
is that they have a very small nuclear deterrent and
the USA has a very big nuclear deterrent, so a
combination of a US large nuclear deterrent plus space
domination plus missile defence could equal
neutralisation of the Chinese nuclear capability in the
first stages of any conflict. That is changing because
China has actually acquired a second-strike capability
with submarine-launched missiles, which will shortly
give it an always-at-sea capability, effectively a
second-strike capability. It is still a very
uncomfortable situation for them to be in, and they do
not particularly enjoy it, but they see the least of all
possible evils as tolerating the regime as it is.
Chair: I can safely say that we could go on picking
your brains for a long time. Thanks very much for
coming today. It is very much appreciated.
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 17
Written evidence
Written evidence from Professor Kerry Brown, Director, China Studies Centre, University of Sydney,
and Associate Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House
—
On 15 November 2012 in Beijing, on the closing day of the 18th Party Congress, the new Politburo
Standing Committee was announced. In March 2013, the government changes accompanying this
followed. China now has a wholly new leadership line up.
—
There were four immediate striking features of the new line up:
—
the number had been reduced from nine in the preceding 17th Party Congress to seven;
—
the age of five of the new leadership means that they would need to retire at the next Congress
in 2017 as they will have already passed the 68-year old threshold disbarring them from
reappointment;
—
four of the seven have been classified as more conservative than liberal in their instincts; and
—
four of the seven have authentic links directly or through marriage to former senior leaders.
—
Working out the political logic behind the reduction from nine to seven has proved difficult because
of the highly opaque way in which this final line up had been decided. The Party used a combination
of relying on precedents established through previous congresses, and in particular the methods used
in the 2002 and 2007 leadership changes, one generational and one intergenerational. But it also
used what was described in some Party material as innovative intra-Party democratic methods. The
new line up coming from this complex process has been presented as a band of leaders who can
work in a unified, consensual way, and which can, most importantly, gain legitimacy beyond the
bounds of the tiny group in the Party that have elevated them to the wider society beyond, 93% of
whom are not Party members.
—
Despite these gestures towards consultation, we see a Politburo super-elite who despite all the
superficial appearance of being promoted after consultation and consensus building, are, in the
manner of their appointment and the presentation of it, an expression of raw political power. These
people are in their positions because they have the support of immensely powerful networks within
the core power-centre of the modern Party. They are also there because they are seen as the best bet
for the Party to now face its menu of immense challenges. These were outlined by Xi Jinping in his
brief comments on 15th November—continuing to deliver growth and prosperity, bridging the gap
between the Party and those it rules, dealing with its own internal governance and in particular
corruption, and trying to come to terms with the country’s increasing international obligations.
—
We need to resist easy talk of factions and leftist versus rightist elements in the Party elite. The
seven-strong line up shows us that we are now looking at a networked Party, where leaders in their
careers build up political capital for promotion through their provincial, ministerial, central and
business careers. State owned enterprises, for instance, remain a strong power base for leadership.
In this “marketised” power environment, vested interests are bound up with particular enterprises,
institutions and Party organs. These are recruited in to support, or sometimes to oppose, particular
elite careers.
—
For Xi Jinping, the “networked leader” has been part of the narrative presented overtly and
subliminally to the domestic and international public. He is seen as someone with experience at all
levels of government, from village upwards, as someone who has links to the military as a junior
private secretary to a military leader in the early 1980s, the Party schools, and through leadership in
the major provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang and the city of Shanghai. He is someone who is not dogged
by dark rumours about his past in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 in the same way as
the felled Bo Xilai was, but who was regarded as belonging to a victimised family at that time who
were properly rehabilitated in the late 1970s with the return of Deng Xiaoping’s leadership. Li
Keqiang similarly has networks both provincially, but also through the Communist Youth League.
—
This is a networked leadership, and within this a tribal and family linked leadership. Rumours of a
narrative of dynastic clashes between the Bo Xilai, Wen Jiabao, and Xi Jinping family surfaced
throughout 2012 and had their apogee in the claim that the expose of the Wen family financial wealth
documented in the New York Times in October was aided by allies of Bo’s family. This probably
overstates the level of manipulation and control in elite politic dynamics in China. But family links
remain immensely influential, with clear connections to parts of the Party-industrial and military
complex. The challenges of how elite leaders try to restrain their family from taking commercial
opportunities are very real. Family links with this networked leadership are the least understood but
probably one of the most influential parts of the dynamics they operate in.
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Ev 18 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
—
—
—
—
—
For all seven leaders, there are two striking features of their careers:
— They are utterly beholden and committed to the Party for all that they have achieved, and have
never uttered or done anything that might detract from its right to have a monopoly on power
in China.
— None have made any comments or done anything in their former careers to indicate that they
believe in western style democratisation of the Party and its processes. For this leadership, they
will be as wedded to cautiousness as their predecessors, both because of the immense constraints
around them and because there is nothing to be gained at the moment from systemic bold policy
moves. They will hold to general policy continuity rather than policy disruption and maintain
the line set out in the 12th Five Year Programme which runs to 2015.
The appointment of Xi Jinping as Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), two years
before expected, was also a surprise. Xi is regarded as the one leader of the new seven who has
links with the military from his career in the early 1980s in the general offica of the central military
in Beijing. With the Party position, that of the CMC chair, and president, Xi Jinping has been given
the full suite more quickly than any other leader since the late 1970s. This in itself is a powerful
statement of elite confidence in and support for the new leadership.
For foreign affairs and the issue of the military and Taiwan there is nothing, at the moment, for this
new leadership to gain from changing the parameters set out by their predecessors. For Taiwan, the
strategy under Hu Jintao of deeper economic links and covert support for the KMT who are more
close to the Mainland has paid good dividends and, barring elections in 2016 returning a more
vocally independence supporting Democratic People’s Party candidate (unlikely), for the new leaders
to mess with this would antagonise Hu and a situation widely seen as being stable. Military leaders
would have no strategic reason to clash with the politicians on this. For broader foreign policy issues,
just as with domestic ones, while presentation might change, for the short to medium term it is
unlikely that the defensive and assertive mindset of this leadership will. They continue to wish to
have more strategic space from the US—this underlies Xi’s statement while in the US in early June
that “the Pacific is big enough for both of us.” But China’s assertive and brittle diplomatic behaviour
over the last four years has made it more isolated than it should be, with a highly ambiguous narrative
for the rest of the world—economic opportunity, but military, security and political unknown.
Communicating more clearly China’s vision of itself in the world will be a major task for the new
leaders. Diversifying their diplomatic links is also important—this might explain Xi’s visit to Russia
and Africa after he became president.
For economic policy since Li Keqiang has taken over as Premier in charge of macroeconomic policy,
the commitment is to double GDP by 2020 to create a middle income society with a per capita GDP
of USD 12,000. Li himself has stated that the country needs to see fast sustainable growth. That
means growth rates before 2015 of around 7% per year. It also means attacking the great structural
imbalances in the economy—low domestic consumption, low service sector as a proportion of GDP,
low urban to rural ration (though this is changing rapidly) and high capital investment. A social
welfare system and an integrated housing market are two ways to lift consumption. Foreign
companies wanting to conquer the domestic Chinese market will be seen as allies in this task of
raising consumption. The main issue is to do everything to improve market access.
This relates to the green economy commitments in the current Five Year Programme. Provincial
leaders have now been clearly told that green GDP targets will become “hard” ones, although there
is lack of clarity about how to measure these. The intellectual argument about the impact of climate
change on the environment and on long term sustainable economic growth has largely been won.
Ironically, China is a policy less infected by the US by climate change scepticism and denial. China
has also under the former leadership progressed a long way from Copenhagen in 2010 to seeing that
even greater pressure on developed countries will not be enough to solve its own issues. The
quandary for the new leadership is to accelerate greening while maintaining high growth. Their
technology and innovation programmes will need radical reform to move from the rhetoric of
commitment to greening to the implementation. The formulation of the key strategies for the 13th
Five Year Plan will begin now. It will be in this process, a sort of long campaign within a new
leadership culminating in 2016, that we will see the real technical response to greening.
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 19
—
What has the “learning Marxist Party” learned from this succession? Through the issues around Bo
Xilai, and through the scandal of Ling Jihua, former Chief of the General Office of the Central
Committee and institutionally in charge of the pre-planning of the Congress, who was moved
sideways to head the United Front Department after the discovery of his son’s death in a car crash
with two women in March this year, the Party has learned that a gap now exists in terms of what it
regards as its moral function in society and how it is viewed by the wider public. This is a significant
paradox. The Party that rose to power representing the United Front for workers and peasants,
overthrowing elitist power structures and striving for equality and sovereign dignity for China is
now regarded as the fiefdom of vested interests, run by a clearly defined party aristocracy, of which
Xi Jinping, Yu Zhengsheng, Li Keqiang and Wang Qishan are members through direct lineage or
(for the last two) marriage. Xi’s declaration against corruption on 15 November therefore is a critical
issue, because it strikes at the heart of the Party’s views to itself of its own legitimacy. Wang Qishan’s
leadership of the Central Discipline and Inspection Commission is also important, as he is regarded
as one of the most effective of the new leaders. Over the last six months, Xi had revisited the issue
of combating corruption, and built on his interests in the past to restoring the moral mandate of the
Party to rule and be looked up to. But in a system where Party interests are intimately linked to
sources of vast profit, and the control of goods that deliver this, and where most of the networks of
elite political figures can leverage their links for commercial gain, beyond abstract declarations of
good intent, it is hard to see hard-edged outcomes from Xi’s language that address some of these
enormous issues of vested interest.
—
In terms of policy, the new leadership operates in restrained circumstances, with commitments that
cut across the transitional period contained in macroeconomic documents like the Five Year
Programme, and in the clear statements made by Hu Jintao in his 8 November speech at the end of
his time as Party Secretary. These carry across to the new leadership. They broadly declare the focal
areas to be the need for social management, for investment in a national welfare system to address
inequality, for measures to create an innovative economy with greater service sector components, to
dealing with sustainability, food security and energy supply. There is an awareness however that
society is beset with too much contention, and that the costs of policing this (in 2011, the internal
security budget was USD111 billion, USD5 billion more than defence) are unsustainable. The Party
has to find a better way of appealing to the broad public to support its policies beyond wealth
creation and coercion.
—
These are highly general commitments. This leadership have space in terms of what they do at a
micro level to implement policy, and in terms of how they communicate that policy. Xi Jinping’s
leadership have asked that official speeches are delivered in more natural language, and that less of
the dreaded “Hu” stilted language of ideological diktat is served up. Presentation is immensely
important in selling policy, and for this leadership, the structural issues of how to mobilize a society
which is undergoing immense and complex economic and socio political change is more critical than
is supposed. The later comments of Wen Jiabao delivered the rhetoric and soundbites of the need
for more predictability in society through rule of law and legality. This leadership now need to
grapple with implementing that.
—
They will not jettison ideology as the refusal to take reference to Mao Zedong Thought from the
Party Constitution during the Plenum meeting in early October 2012 made clear. But they can express
that ideology in a different and more human way, in particular looking to close the gap between a
highly trained leadership elite and the society they are meant to guide and show moral and political
leadership in. Xi Jinping’s deployment of the symbolic resources of his own history and of his own
vision and linguistic register therefore do matter.
—
This is a leadership of political scientists, historians, economists, lawyers and social scientists. The
era of the technocrats has come to an end. It is a leadership who are diverse in terms of the regional
experience within China, having links from Shanxi, to Hainan, to Zhejiang and Henan, but whose
sole international experience is through Zhang Dejiang’s period studying in North Korea. This is a
leadership set up therefore for a domestic agenda, who will resist attempts to pull them more deeply
into international affairs which are seen as lying beyond their national interests, despite the very real
pressures that will be put on them to do this. It is a leadership brought from a very limited intellectual
culture (male, Han, aged 58 to 68) but which is probably as diverse as the Party in its current
situation might be able to manage. The fundamental question is, therefore, whether the best that the
Party can offer is, in terms of the immense challenges facing it now, going to prove to be good
enough. While they are probably more interested in hearing new ideas about how to approach their
immense governance issues, they are in no mood on issues like Tibet, human rights, or their own
internal reform, to hear lectures from outsiders who they view as tainted by the global financial crisis
since 2008. They view international relations now in a more emboldened way, and in ways which
show their awareness of their new economic status and how this needs to be reflected in the way in
which the world talks to and engages with China.
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Ev 20 Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence
—
The structure of the Central Committee which was announced along with the new Politburo and
Standing Committee is unchanged. 50% of its membership are new. But the bias towards provincial
leadership positions (a fifth), military positions (around 22 seats), academic and state owned
enterprises, and national ministry positions as the standard components of the Committee remains
the same. Representation from people who state that their home province in Guangdong remains
high. In terms of gender, age and ethnicity, however, this Central Committee remains almost wholly
similar to the last one. This is a sign that underneath the bolder presentation of reformist intention
towards corruption, economic policy, and use of political language, the CCP in the 21st century lives
with the paradox that a movement founded in revolution has become, in its seventh decade in power,
self-preserving, highly cautious, led by people with remarkably little diversity, and, dare it be said,
extremely conservative.
24 June 2013
Written evidence from Human Rights Watch
Summary
—
Human rights violations in China are severe and systematic. Despite the recent change of leadership
at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, the government remains an authoritarian one-party state,
responsible for large-scale human rights abuses and the denial of many fundamental freedoms.
—
The FCO and the UK government assert that “they consistently raise human rights concerns with the
Chinese leadership, both publicly and privately”, and that rights concerns are an important element in
the UK bilateral relationship with China. Human Rights Watch believes that these claims, particularly
with respect to public diplomacy, are an overstatement. There have been many recent public
statements on China made by UK Ministers that omitted any reference whatsoever to human rights
issues. This includes statements on UK/China relations made by David Cameron on 8 February 2013
and Nick Clegg on 11 February 2013. A substantial William Hague statement on UK/China relations
on 27 July 2012 also failed to make a single reference to human rights concerns. Even if concerns
are being expressed privately, our view is that the effectiveness of this will be reduced by the failure
to combine it with regular and robust expressions of public concern.
—
The FCO does document the human rights situation in China fairly comprehensively, for example in
the recent China country chapter of the 2012 Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy, and
UK ministers and the Ambassador and staff in Beijing do raise specific human rights issues with
Chinese Ministers and officials. This is welcome. But to be true to their public rhetoric about the
importance and centrality of human rights to the UK government’s foreign policy, they should press
human rights issues, publicly and privately, and with greater consistency and assertiveness, at the
very highest levels of the Chinese government. It should also press these concerns through the
European Union and the United Nations.
1. The human rights situation in China—key issues of concern
Although China has undergone rapid economic modernisation over the last three decades, and this has led
to significantly improved living standards for many Chinese people, the government remains highly
authoritarian and repressive, responsible for large-scale and wide-ranging rights violations and the denial of
many fundamental freedoms.
2. Human Rights Defenders in China regularly face police harassment, house arrest, short-term detention,
“re-education through labour”, forcible commitment to psychiatric facilities, or imprisonment on criminal
charges. A high-profile figure like Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo is serving an 11-year sentence for
“incitement to subvert state power”, while his wife, Liu Xia, has been held under house arrest in Beijing since
December 2010. The UK government should continue to press these cases, and the plight of the much wider
group of Chinese activists—less well known—but equally or even more harshly treated by the authorities.
Despite their precarious legal status and surveillance by the authorities, civil society groups continue to try to
expand their work. An informal but dedicated network of activists monitor and document human rights cases
under the banner of a country-wide weiquan (rights defence) movement. These rights activists and defenders
face a host of repressive state measures. The FCO is currently reviewing its approach to supporting human
rights defenders around the world. There are many human rights defenders in China for whom the UK
government can and should speak out.
3. Legal reforms were effectively stalled under the Hu-Wen leadership and the government rejects judicial
independence. Forced confessions under torture remain prevalent and miscarriages of justice frequent due to
weak courts and tight limits on rights of the defence. In March 2012, the government adopted comprehensive
revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). These changes legalise the power of the police to place “state
security, terrorism, and major corruption” suspects in detention in a location of the police’s choice, outside of
the formal detention system, and for up to six months. These measures put suspects at risk of torture while
giving the government a justification for “disappearance” of dissidents and activists. China is also thought to
continue to lead the world on executions. The exact number remains a state secret but experts estimate it to be
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Foreign Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 21
around 5,000 to 8,000 a year. China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
in 1998, but has not in the past 15 years taken steps towards ratification.
4. Freedom of expression is severely restricted in China. Sina Weibo, the largest of China’s social media
microblog services, gives 300 million subscribers space to express opinions and discontent to an extent
previously unavailable. But like all online content, Weibo is subject to strict scrutiny and manipulation by
China’s sensors. Alternative social media operations, including Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are blocked.
At least 27 Chinese journalists were serving prison terms in 2012, and journalists who report on sensitive
topics can suffer physical violence. The Chinese government also seeks to extend its stringent controls on
freedom of expression overseas, including on one occasion in 2012 to the UK. In March, the Chinese
government successfully pressured the organisers of the annual London book fair to exclude any dissident or
exiled Chinese writers from the list of official participants. It is not clear to what extent the UK government
was involved in this process. It certainly did not make any public statement in defence of those writers critical
of the Chinese government, or champion their right to participate.
5. Freedom of religion is heavily restricted in China, with religious worship only possible in officially
approved mosques, churches, temples and monasteries, and with religious appointments and publications all
subject to government review. Unregistered spiritual groups such as Protestant “house churches” are deemed
unlawful and the government subjects their members to fines and prosecutions. The Chinese government
classifies the Falun Gong—a meditation-focused spiritual group banned since July 1999—as an “evil cult” and
arrests, harasses and intimidates its members.
6. Health and disability rights—The Chinese government remains hostile towards claims for compensation
stemming from the 1990s blood scandal in Henan province. In August last year, baton-wielding police beat
several members of a group of 300 people with HIV/AIDS protesting in Zhengzhou. The crowd was protesting
the government’s refusal to pay compensation to those infected with the virus via government-organised mass
blood plasma sales in Henan province in the 1990s. The government’s National Human Rights Action plan
(2012–15) commits the government to greater protection from widespread heavy metal pollution, yet no redress
or medical attention has materialised for children poisoned by lead in Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Hunan in
recent years. Although it is a party to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities CRPD),
China’s protections for disabled people remain inadequate, with ongoing abuses and the denial of services.
7. Women’s reproductive rights are curtailed under China’s abusive family planning regulations. The
government continues to impose administrative sanctions, fines and coercive measures, including forced
abortion.
8. Tibet—The situation in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and the neighbouring Tibetan autonomous
areas of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces remains tense following the massive Chinese
government crackdown on popular protests there in 2008, and the introduction of measures designed to place
all Tibetan monasteries under the direct control of government officials who will be permanently stationed
there. The government has yet to indicate that it will accommodate the aspirations of Tibetan people for greater
autonomy, even within the narrow confines of the country’s autonomy law on ethnic minorities. In the course
of 2012, 72 Tibetans self-immolated. Chinese security forces maintain a heavy presence and the authorities
continue to tightly restrict access and travel to Tibetan areas, particularly for journalists and foreign visitors.
Arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and torture in custody remain widespread. As part of its drive to
build “a New Socialist countryside” on the Tibetan plateau, the Chinese government continues to implement
large development programmes, designed to re-house or relocate up to 80% of the rural population. The
damaging effects of this policy are the focus of a new Human Rights Watch report, published this month. The
relocation policies have been carried out—contrary to Chinese government claims—with no effective choice
and without genuine consultation of those affected, while compensation mechanisms are opaque and
inadequate. Pastoralists deprived of their traditional livelihoods face declining living standards and increased
dependency on government subsidies. We were disappointed by William Hague’s rather supine statement on
Tibet on 18 June, in response to a parliamentary question, in which he referred very generally to “well
established positions on human rights”, but then chose to add, more specifically, “we also understand Chinese
sensitivities and concerns about Tibet”. Clearly these “sensitivities” cannot justify or excuse China’s highly
repressive actions in Tibet. William Hague might have made that point explicitly in his answer.
9. Xinjiang—Under the guise of counterterrorism and “anti-separatism”, the Chinese government maintains
a pervasive system of ethnic discrimination against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region, and sharply curbs religious and cultural expression. An atmosphere of fear among the
Uighur population contributes to growing ethnic polarisation. Factors contributing to this include the
omnipresence of the security forces, the recent history of disappearances and an overtly politicised judiciary.
10. Hong Kong—Civic groups and the public have challenged the Hong Kong government on rights issues.
Hong Kong authorities appear unwilling to deviate much from pro-Beijing interests. They have not moved
towards universal suffrage as mandated by the territory’s mini-constitution, and have shown weakness in
safeguarding the territory’s autonomy, civil and political freedoms and the rule of law.
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FCO/UK Policy on Human Rights towards China—HRW’s Critique
11. The China chapter of the 2012 FCO Human Rights and Democracy report says that “the UK
government’s approach to human rights in China is one of constructive long-term engagement, to support
modernisation and internal reform”. It further says that the (UK/FCO) “approach is delivered through three
main pillars: high-level lobbying and engagement, the bilateral human rights dialogue and financial support to
projects in-country”.
12. Consistency and centrality of human rights promotion in FCO/UK policy towards China—FCO and the
UK government assert that “they consistently raise human rights concerns with the Chinese leadership, both
publicly and privately”, and that rights concerns are an important element in the UK bilateral relationship with
China. Human Rights Watch believes that these claims, particularly with respect to public diplomacy, are an
overstatement. There have been many recent public statements on China made by UK Ministers that omitted
any reference whatsoever to human rights issues, which undermines the claim that rights issues are raised
consistently. This includes statements on UK/China relations made by David Cameron on 8 February 2013 and
Nick Clegg on 11 February 2013. A substantial William Hague statement on UK/China relations on 27 July
2012 also failed to make a single reference to human rights concerns. Even if concerns are being expressed
privately, our view is that the effectiveness of this will be reduced by the failure to combine it with regular
and robust expressions of public concern.
13. The UK/China Human Rights Dialogue—The China chapter of the FCO Human Rights and Democracy
Report gives a generally upbeat account of the role of the UK/China Human Rights Dialogue and the various
issues that the UK has raised through this process. While supportive of the principle of dialogue, Human Rights
Watch is concerned that the UK/China Human Rights Dialogue appears to have delivered very little tangible
improvement. The chapter notes that the 2012 meeting in Nanjing was the 20th round of the Dialogue. But
what is there to show for all of those hours of discussion? FCO Ministers and officials should be pressed on
this point. We are also concerned that the existence of the Dialogue allows Ministers to say that human rights
issues are being dealt with there, as opposed to being raised in meetings between foreign ministers or heads
of state.
14. Democracy and elections—The China chapter notes that “the 18th Party Congress in November did not
signal any movement towards representative democracy”. But the fact that the Chinese people had absolutely
no say in the selection of the country’s new leaders was conspicuous by its absence in the official UK
government response to the leadership change in China.
15. Freedom of expression and assembly—The China chapter says that these issues were raised regularly in
2012, including at the inaugural People to People Dialogue in April. But no detail is provided as to which
issues were raised or even who was involved in this People to People Dialogue.
16. Refugees and asylum seekers—The FCO report states that in August 2012 “around 1,000 Kachin refugees
were returned to Burma”. Human Rights Watch’s figures suggest that the number of Kachin returned at that
time was closer to 4,000.
17. Hong Kong—In the FCO report it says the Foreign Secretary “looked forward to further substantive
progress towards full universal and equal suffrage for elections in 2017 and 2020”. We believe this to be highly
optimistic. Our assessment is that progress on the expansion of the suffrage is at a standstill or moving
backwards. Nor do we see much evidence of positive UK engagement on the issue.
18. The European Union—The China chapter of the FCO report makes no mention whatsoever of the role
of the European Union in pressing human rights concerns with the government of China. This is a serious
omission given the potential leverage that would result from all 27 EU member states acting collectively on
these issues.
19. The United Nations—there is similarly no reference in the chapter to the role of the United Nations,
although China should be raised at the next session of the UN Human Rights Council and although China
undergoes its Universal Periodic Review in October this year. China’s bid for re-election to the Council in
November creates an ideal opportunity for UK human rights diplomacy.
Recommendations
Human Rights Watch urges the FCO and the UK government as a whole to:
— Press human rights issues, publicly and privately, and with greater consistency and
assertiveness, at the very highest levels of the Chinese government. This should include
speaking up for specific human rights defenders, but also across the range of human rights
concerns listed in this submission.
— Set out clearer benchmarks for the UK/China Human Rights Dialogue, so that it is possible to
judge the efficacy of this Dialogue in advancing human rights objectives. This also applies to
the EU/China Human Rights Dialogue, the latest meeting of which was a major disappointment.
Support EU Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) conclusions on China, so as provide a strong and common
message to China of the importance attached to human rights by all EU member states.
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Use the next session of the UN Human Rights Council and China’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to
press for real progress by China on a range of human rights concerns.
For more Human Rights Watch reporting on China, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/asia/china
26 June 2013
Written evidence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Introduction
1. China’s rise in global political and economic influence has made it one of our most important bilateral
relationships. As China continues to grow quickly compared to the rest of the world, new opportunities emerge
not only for trade and investment but also for the exchange of talent, ideas and expertise.
2. We continue to broaden and strengthen our ties with China, with deeper cultural links, more students
studying in each other’s countries, more tourism and more trade than ever before.
3. We work with China on a range of bilateral and multilateral issues and we are working to deepen our
cooperation in areas such as prosperity and security. Dialogue is vital; by engaging with China we will expand
our economic relationship while working towards making positive changes to human rights and addressing
global challenges like climate change and poverty.
UK-China Bilateral Relations
UK’s relationship with China
4. The relationship between China and the UK is broader and deeper than at any other time in our history.
We have a number of shared interests and there is now a steady stream of tourists, students, business leaders
and politicians travelling in both directions.
5. China now has new leaders in place, and the Prime Minister has had friendly exchanges with President
Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang since they arrived in their positions. The Foreign Secretary has also had a
positive conversation with his new Chinese counterpart Minister Wang Yi.
6. Although we will inevitably have differences of opinion, the UK and China regularly work together at
international level to discuss issues of global importance such as development, climate change, Syria or the
DPRK. China has a growing global voice and the breadth and depth of our cooperation is increasing
accordingly.
7. We have over 40 regular dialogues with China at both Ministerial and official level covering a range of
issues from the economy to human rights, including a Summit between the Prime Minister and the Premier
and an Economic and Financial Dialogue led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his counterpart in the
State Council. Given the priorities we share, we expect there to be a busy programme of visits to and from
China over the next year.
Trade, growth and investment
8. China has the second largest economy in the world. What marks out the Chinese economy is not only the
scale of recent development but the speed: between 1978 and 2011, average growth exceeded 10 percent. This
means that the Chinese economy could be more than 50 percent larger now than it was at the start of the global
financial crisis in 2008.
9. Although the era of super-fast Chinese growth may be ending, with growth slowing and beginning to
stabilise, the opportunities for trade and investment are significant. As China rebalances its economy and the
domestic consumption increases, there will be a greater need for UK expertise to help China develop financial
services, use green technologies to ensure sustainable development and provide low-cost healthcare.
10. UK goods exports to China are growing strongly, rising 12.8% last year to £9.9 billion. In April this
year Britain’s monthly exports to China hit the £1 billion level for the first time. We are also attracting
significant inward investment from China. Last year Chinese enterprises committed several billion pounds to a
series of major UK investments. The last two months alone have seen Wanda commit to invest £700 million
into the South Bank and ABP launch a major new project to invest £1 billion into the Royal Albert Docks.
Both sides recognise the growing importance of our economic relationship. UK and Chinese leaders have
publicly described the UK–China relationship as being a “partnership for growth”.
11. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) are working hard
to promote UK exports and attract inward investment. There has been a significant increase in the HMG
resources allocated to China, the “network shift” discussed below, which has enabled us to expand our ability
to promote UK prosperity. Posts across the China network have UKTI staff and prosperity staff, who run
projects aimed at sharing UK best practice while also providing opportunities for UK companies to engage
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with Chinese institutions. Posts also lobby on specific market access issues for UK companies, both at national
and provincial level.
FCO capability
12. In his statement to Parliament on 11 May, the Foreign Secretary set out his ambitions for Britain’s future
diplomatic network and expenditure allocation plans up to 2015. He announced a strategic shift in Britain’s
overseas network to expand our connections with the 21st century’s rising powers. The FCO China network
has been at the forefront of this programme, with an additional £4 million investment to increase staff numbers,
aimed at increasing our reach, understanding and influence in China.
13. At present, the FCO’s China network has added 63 new staff, an increase of approximately 14%. Around
one-third of these are new FCO diplomatic staff, the remainder are locally-engaged appointments. This uplift
has led to new positions being created in priority areas such as financial services, health cooperation, and energy
security. It has also enabled us to deepen cooperation in existing areas, such as on RMB internationalisation and
intellectual property protection. We have also assigned more staff to increase our capacity to conduct digital
diplomacy, getting UK messages out to China’s internet users who numbered 564 million at last count. We
have allocated a significant number of new staff to conducting outreach activity in China’s second and third
tier cities, improving our understanding and influence, boosting our prosperity agenda, and giving the UK a
bigger presence.
14. To equip these new diplomats with appropriate language skills, we have expanded our Mandarin language
training programme to meet the increased demand for Chinese speakers and we now offer Mandarin training
to London-based FCO staff.
15. In addition to new staff, we are running a programme to upgrade our estate, through renovations to our
existing estate and preparations to move, to more cost-effective buildings in Shanghai and Guangzhou, colocating with HMG partners and other organisations in these key cities. We are in negotiations with the
Chinese authorities to open a further Consulate-General, alongside our existing Posts in Hong Kong, Shanghai,
Guangzhou and Chongqing.
Cross-Whitehall approach
16. China impacts directly on the delivery of many areas of the Government’s agenda, both international
and domestic. Increasing numbers of Government Departments are developing links with the Chinese State.
China Department in the FCO coordinates the overall strategic framework for the Government’s approach to
China and, alongside the FCO China network in-country, advises and assists other departments in their contacts
with the Chinese system. FCO Research Analysts provide in-depth expertise to support policy-making on issues
involving China, and ensure this takes account of the latest thinking by external experts.
17. Coordination occurs at a number of different levels—from informal working level contacts for day-today requirements, to senior official-led cross-Whitehall meetings. The FCO also works closely with the
National Security Secretariat in Cabinet Office to provide oversight and direction across the scope of
Government business. Inside China, the Ambassador chairs the cross-departmental China Board of
Management, which oversees delivery of a single county business plan bringing together a range of
departmental objectives.
Cyber security
18. The UK is vigorously pushing the international debate around cyber security. We do this multilaterally
including at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) regional forum, of which China is a key member. Senior Chinese government officials also
attended the Budapest Cyber Conference.
19. We welcome China’s contribution to the recent UN Group of Government Experts (UNGGE) discussion
on Cyber Security. Agreeing recommendations for responsible state behaviour, confidence building measures
and capacity building measures is a significant step forward to tackle challenges in cyberspace which affect
us all. We hope China will join us in supporting the adoption of the UNGGE’s report at this year’s UN
General Assembly.
20. In addition to raising cyber issues with the Chinese at official-level meetings, we fund exchanges and
dialogues on cyber issues which increase our dialogue with China on a range of issues from cyber security,
cyber crime and internet governance. We also work closely with the Chinese to combat cyber crime. For
example the State Council Information Office blocked a number of websites in China that were illegally
streaming live Premier League football matches. We continue to stress to China the importance of an open
internet as the basis for thriving creative industries.
21. The UK is a leading player in cyber security. HMG has developed a risk mitigation strategy which
enables the government to work with the major communication service providers in the UK to ensure that their
networks and the services they provide are appropriately secure, regardless of the vendor used for
infrastructure equipment.
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China’s Internal Policy
New Chinese leadership and direction of internal policy
22. Since taking office General Secretary Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have set out an economic and
social reform agenda with the stated goal of achieving “China’s national rejuvenation”. There appears to be a
broad consensus on the need for further economic reforms to rebalance China’s economy away from investment
and towards domestic consumption. China’s new leadership have spoken about the challenges ahead and the
need to tackle vested interests within the Chinese system if they are to put in place a more sustainable growth
model. The direction of any new policies is likely to emerge in the run up to the Third Plenum, a major Party
meeting due this autumn.
23. Xi Jinping has made a number of statements which appear to be aimed at reassuring the Chinese people
that the Party and Government will be more responsive to public concerns. His “Chinese Dream”, while not
yet fully defined, appears to be trying to link individual aspirations with the Government’s policy programme;
on corruption he has said that “power should be wielded within the cage of regulations” although it remains
to be seen what this would mean in practice. Initiatives to promote the private sector and to push ahead with
further urbanisation would require removing many controls and restrictions if they are to be effective, ie
China’s household registration system which limits access to urban welfare schemes for rural migrants.
24. Nonetheless the new leadership has explicitly ruled out moving towards a Western-style political system.
Instead, their approach is likely to focus on intra-Party reforms.
Hong Kong
25. The handover of Hong Kong in 1997 marked a major milestone in the development of UK-China
relations. We continue to have important legal, parliamentary, educational and professional connections with
Hong Kong, as is shown by the intensity of high level exchanges. Hong Kong is a significant trading partner
for the UK—bilateral trade between Hong Kong and the UK in goods for the period January to December
2012 amounted to £12.1 billion. Hong Kong was the UK’s 14th largest export market for goods and the second
largest in Asia Pacific, after mainland China.
26. We take seriously our obligations to Hong Kong under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. We continue
to publish Six-Monthly Reports to Parliament and the latest Report was laid before the House on 31 January.
We consider that, in general, the principle of “One Country, Two Systems” continues to work in practice and
that the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Joint Declaration continue to be upheld. We think it is important
for Hong Kong’s future success that this principle continues to be respected.
27. We are clear that the transition to universal suffrage for the elections of the Chief Executive in 2017 and
the Legislative Council in 2020 will be in the best interests of Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity. The
precise shape of any constitutional package will be for the governments of China and Hong Kong and the
Hong Kong people to decide, and it will be important that any proposals give the people of Hong Kong a
genuine choice and enable them to feel they have a real stake in the outcome.
28. In general, the Hong Kong media has continued its tradition of lively reporting and investigative
journalism. This was most evident in the blanket coverage of CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden who was
in Hong Kong in June. Media coverage included reporting of government handling; and extensive commentary
about the relevance of the case to Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and legal and judicial system.
Human Rights
29. China has made progress in improving the economic and social freedoms of its citizens in the last three
decades. But we would like to see China lift the barriers that still remain with regards to ratification of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as part of China’s ongoing process of internal
modernisation and reform.
30. We believe that the international community should take a coherent, consistent and constructive approach
to engaging China on human rights issues. We work with the EU and other partners to achieve this, placing an
emphasis on constructive long-term engagement. We focus in particular on: rule of law issues, especially the
death penalty and criminal justice reform; freedom of expression; and the development of civil society.
31. On Tibet, we understand Chinese concerns and sensitivities about this complex issue. We continue to
recognise Tibet as part of China and we do not support Tibetan independence. However, we encourage all
parties to work towards the resumption of dialogue to ease tensions and work towards achieving meaningful
autonomy for Tibetans within the framework of the Chinese constitution.
32. Our values engagement is built on three pillars: high-level exchanges, a bilateral human rights dialogue
and a programme of technical support delivered in-country. We consistently raise human rights concerns
directly with the Chinese leadership, both publicly and in private. We publish an annual report on human rights
in China and provide online updates on a quarterly basis. In support of our human rights engagement we are
stepping up our online public diplomacy. We aim to raise the profile of aspects of British society and promote
values which resonate with the rapidly growing number of netizens on social media.
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China’s Foreign Policy
China’s role on the global stage
33. China is increasingly taking on a more active international role as its global economic and political
influence grows and its interests become more globalised. Securing the energy and other resources that China
needs to grow is a major driver in its foreign policy: China consumes 60% of the world’s iron ore exports,
worth over $110 billion per annum, and imports over half of the oil it uses and a third of its gas. But it is also
looking to open up new opportunities for trade and investment in areas other than resources, especially in
Europe and North America.
34. China describes its foreign policy approach as non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. But
its global economic footprint means China is likely to play an increasingly active role outside of East Asia, to
protect its economic, military and diplomatic interests, as well as expatriate workers and businesses in unstable
or disaster-prone regions. China’s counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009, dispatch of naval
vessels to support the evacuation of more than 35,000 Chinese nationals from Libya and first-ever deployment
of combatant peacekeepers, to South Sudan, are examples of its growing reach and willingness to engage on
matters of international peace and security.
35. As China’s global interests diversify, so too will the opportunities, and the challenges, in working with
it on international issues. The UK’s interest is in encouraging China to play an active and responsible role and
to recognise the full breadth of its interests on the world stage. We see China as a key partner with whom we
want to expand our wider ties and common interests while having a constructive dialogue on areas where we
disagree. The UK/China Strategic Dialogue, between the Foreign Secretary and his Chinese counterpart, now
State Counsellor Yang Jiechi, is an important part of this relationship. It is supported by bilateral foreign and
security dialogues and defence talks between UK and Chinese officials and military officers.
36. Our dialogue and cooperation with China on international issues is focused on three areas. Firstly, we
want to encourage China to do more to help resolve international conflicts and prevent the spread and use of
weapons of mass destruction. This includes taking action, in concert with the international community, to tackle
the problem of a nuclear-armed North Korea. We work closely with China in the E3+3 format to stop Iran
acquiring nuclear weapons. China has also made a contribution to peace and security in Mali and Sudan and
South Sudan, and shown signs of increased commitment to stability in Afghanistan. Finally, China has an
important part to play in tackling organised crime and illegal migration, as well as Chemical, Biological,
Radiological, and Nuclear terrorism.
37. Secondly, we want to work with China to take action against dangerous climate change and to promote
energy security. In the last year we have collaborated with China on influential energy and climate change
projects, including on China’s future role in international energy governance and a tool that helps policy makers
see the future impact on emissions of current energy policy decisions.
38. Thirdly, we are looking to expand our partnership with China on reducing global poverty, through
multilateral initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals and development co-operation in third
countries. This year we began our first joint development projects with China, in Malawi and Uganda, under
a Memorandum of Understanding that will allow for further collaboration in the future.
China and the major powers
39. China’s most important relationship is with the US, with whom it must manage a multiplicity of issues
of global consequence, including human rights, cyber security, and most crucially, security in East Asia and
the Pacific. China and Russia coordinate their activity on international issues, notably in recent vetoes of UN
Security Council resolutions on Syria. But although their relationship is growing closer, each also views its
relationship with the US as a major priority, and some regional and economic differences persist. China’s
relationship with India has improved in recent years, buoyed by deepening trade and growing economic ties.
Yet tensions remain, notably over disputed border areas.
40. The EU is central to many UK interests in China. We want it to be open to Chinese trade and investment,
but also to effectively exercise constructive influence based on its position as China’s largest export market
and a strategic political partner. In preparing for the next EU-China Summit, in Autumn 2013, we will work
within the EU to engage China positively on our concerns about market access and a level playing field for
our firms, and encourage the EU and China to reach an amicable and negotiated solution on the Commission’s
proposal for trade defence measures on solar panels and other trade issues.
China and key security issues in East Asia
41. China has a complex relationship with other states in East Asia. It has built close economic and trade
ties with Japan, the Republic of Korea and ASEAN and, the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership aside, participates
enthusiastically in regional trade initiatives. But many of China’s neighbours have welcomed the US
“rebalancing” to Asia as a counterbalance to its growing economic and military power, and what is perceived
by some as growing Chinese assertiveness in territorial disputes.
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42. China traditionally has a very close relationship with North Korea, but recently has publically expressed
its concerns about North Korea’s behaviour and voted with us for new UN Security Council sanctions in
March. It has repeatedly expressed its commitment to denuclearising the Korean Peninsula and supports the
resumption of the Six Party Talks to work towards that goal. We encourage China to stress to North Korea that
the international community will not tolerate its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and that its long term
interests will only be served by engagement with the international community.
43. Tensions between China and Japan over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East
China Sea have increased since their purchase by the Japanese government from a private owner last summer.
This prompted a strong reaction by China, a rival claimant, including anti-Japan protests in September and
regular movements near the islands by surveillance ships to assert Chinese claims. Meanwhile in the South
China Sea, territorial disputes between China, Vietnam and the Philippines continue to cause worrying
confrontations in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
44. In both cases, the UK is concerned that an unforeseen event between rival parties, perhaps involving
military or civilian enforcement vessels, could escalate into a more serious incident. Threats to Asia-Pacific
peace and stability might have far reaching effects, including on the UK: for instance, recent tensions in the
East China Sea have had a negative impact on trade between China and Japan, when the West is looking to
Asia to generate global growth. Together with our partners in the EU, we encourage all sides to exercise
restraint, resolve territorial issues through a process of dialogue and keep communication channels open.
5 July 2013
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