Memorandum submitted by Graham Hutchings
INTRODUCTION
The need for a close, co-operative, constructive
relationship between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic
of China (hereafter "China") is incontestable. China
is the world's most populous country. It is in the throes of a
profound transformation arising from the Chinese government's
commitment to economic reform and modernisation. It will shortly
become a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), opening
the country still further to foreign commercial and other influences.
It is a rising power whose accommodation within an international
order not of its own making, and many of whose values it does
not share, is one of the principal issues in international diplomacy.
The UK's stake in the nature and outcome of
China's evolution is considerable and multi-dimensional. The approach
of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the country must
reflect this complex reality. The task is to deliver an agenda
that meets immediate UK interests—promoting commerce, enhancing
security, curbing weapons proliferation, protecting the environment—and
the long range but no less important goals of improving human
rights, strengthening the rule of law and preventing China from
undermining fragile democracy in Hong Kong and crushing the much
more vigorous form practised in the Republic of China on Taiwan
(hereafter "Taiwan"), with which Britain maintains substantive
though unofficial relations.
PRESERVING THE
UNITY OF
BRITAIN'S
INTERESTS
Marrying short term and long term objectives
is often difficult in diplomacy. In China, a country of great
complexity as well as considerable potential, and one ruled by
a Communist Party whose leaders are far less confident than their
rhetoric suggests, it is especially taxing. Nevertheless, it is
imperative that the FCO preserve the unity of British interests
in its dealings with China. Above all, it must not be manoeuvred
into a situation in which long term interests are sacrificed for
those of the short term.
Unfortunately, there are indications that this
has happened in recent years, and that the FCO's justified pursuit
of dialogue and co-operation with Beijing has become something
of an end instead of a means for advancing the UK's full agenda.
Mutual interest in realising the short term goals described above
appears to have diverted and weakened Britain's commitment towards
equally fundamental long term objectives. These include ending
China's continuing abuse of human rights (throughout the country
but notably in Tibet and Xinjiang), and affirming the rapid progress
of democracy in Taiwan (and, accordingly, enhancing contacts with
official representatives of the Taiwanese government).
THE NEED
FOR REALISM
IN SINO-BRITISH
RELATIONS
Part of the problem described above arises,
perhaps paradoxically, from an apparent lack of realism (or a
reluctance to express such realism in public) in the FCO's relationship
with China. The task of diplomacy is to deal with the world as
it is rather than as it might be; Britain therefore is justified
in maintaining diplomatic relations with China and denying them,
as Beijing's insists, to Taiwan. This is a matter of realism and
national interest: China has a population of 1.2 billion, Taiwan
22 million. China is a nuclear power, a member of the United Nations
Security Council and plays an important role in most other international
organisations. It is a co-signatory of the Sino-British Joint
Declaration on the future of Hong Kong. UK trade and investment
in China are growing. They will do so at a faster rate in future.
Taiwan, though an important UK trade partner,
obviously lacks the geopolitical weighting of China. It is regrettable
and unsatisfactory that the price of maintaining diplomatic relations
with China is a prohibition on official ties with Taipei. However,
it is in the UK's interests to pay it.
Equally it is in the UK's interest to recognise
the reality of China itself, as well as the consequences for diplomacy
of the unfinished civil war between China and Taiwan. This requires
acceptance and affirmation of the following:
— While commercial opportunities in
China are increasing, the UK economy will never come to depend
in any significant way on that of the People's Republic. An important
aspect of FCO's work is facilitating the advance of British business
in China in the face of fierce international competition. However,
most UK firms will find business in China difficult and some will
find it unrewarding. The myth of the "world's largest market
for foreign goods", fostered sedulously by successive Chinese
governments, and believed by successive generations of foreign
business personnel, must be acknowledged as a myth.
— Close commercial, cultural and diplomatic
engagement between the UK and the PRC is part of China's intensified
encounter with the outside world during the past two decades.
This encounter, like the domestic drive for economic reform of
which it is part, has exerted a generally positive influence on
Chinese society and on relations between the Chinese government
and its citizens. It can be expected to do so in future given
China's commitment to closer integration with the outside world
and the ensuing inevitable expansion of frontiers, at all levels
of China's national life. The FCO, therefore, should encourage
this process as a means of strengthening the autonomy of the individual,
encouraging the appearance of civil society and realising broader
agenda items of environmental protection and the control of weapons
proliferation. In other words, China must be engaged at all levels.
— Nevertheless, engagement can never
be uncritical. It should be based on the recognition that despite
rapid change, China remains an authoritarian country subject to
the arbitrary rule of a clique of Communist leaders. Campaigns
for peaceful political change are invariably crushed—often,
as in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, by excessive violence. Religious
liberties are tightly rationed. Attempts by ethnic minorities
to pursue autonomy or independence are always suppressed—again
often violently. There is no right to strike. Press and academic
freedoms are virtually non-existent. There is no independent judiciary.
The idea of the rule of law is gaining ground, but the readiness
of the Communist Party, and particularly its senior leaders, to
be bound by it is still distant. Chinese leaders are growing more
belligerent towards Taiwan, whose democracy they threaten to crush
because it has produced a government opposed to unification on
Beijing's terms.
— The persistence of authoritarianism
in China is reflected in a range of repressive activities from
the continuing crackdown on adherents of the Fa Lun Gong religious
sect to the outlawing, in 1998, of the opposition Democratic Party
and imprisonment of its members; from the intimidation of Taiwan
to the suppression of religious freedom, and therefore national
identity, in Tibet. Since these actions infringe internationally
accepted standards of behaviour, as well as China's own constitution,
the FCO should make it clear that they constitute serious impediments
to closer relations between Britain and China at all levels.
— Indeed, such impediments are so serious
that they warrant the creation of a dedicated Sino-British dialogue
on human rights as one strand in the UK's relations with China.
And if, past evidence suggests, such a dialogue produces few tangible
results apart from confining discussion of what China regards
as a highly sensitive issue to closed-door sessions, the FCO should
pursue this aspect of the UK agenda energetically at international
fora, notably the United Nations' Human Rights Commission. The
idea, fostered by China itself, that public pressure to improve
its human rights will get nowhere is belied by the enormous efforts
Chinese diplomats devote each year to defeating motions critical
of China placed before the UN Commission. In some areas, human
rights among them, confrontation with China is both proper and
more likely to be productive than co-operation on Beijing's terms—ie
public silence.
— For the foreseeable future it is
neither practicable nor possible for Britain to establish official
relations with Taiwan. However, the FCO should not be brow beaten
by Beijing into silence over extremely positive political developments
in Taiwan. Neither should it refrain from expressions of concern
over the threats to security, prosperity and freedom in the Asia-Pacific
region posed by China's belligerence towards the island. The FCO's
current treatment of Taiwanese leaders are pariahs who must not
be allowed to visit the UK and the unofficial ban on senior UK
ministers visiting the island—both for fear of offending
China is unjustified and unjustifiable. It is also against the
UK's own interests as well as those of China. The growth of democracy
in Taiwan has equipped the island for closer not more distant
relations with the UK, and to some extent it has provided a model
for the Mainland.
CONCLUSION
The shortcomings in the FCO's role and policies
towards the People's Republic of China are mainly, though not
solely, matters of emphasis and approach. They are no less significant
for that. They stem from a reluctance to recognise China as it
is: a rising power in the throes of generally positive change
but one still ruled by an unelected dictatorship fearful of such
change and determined to crush many of its manifestations, especially
those that facilitate greater individual freedom. The present
FCO approach cleaves too closely to official Chinese views of
reality: ie that history and culture have made the country a "special
case" in which adherence to international standards of social
and political behaviour is either difficult or impossible; and
that public criticism or confrontation on sensitive questions
are certain to be counterproductive. It is not within the UK's
capacity alone to change China. But it is the job of the FCO to
express as vigorously, and often as publicly, as possible, that
close, co-operative and constructive relations between Britain
and the People's Republic of China depend to a large extent on
changes in China's behaviour—particularly in the field of
human rights.
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