Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60 - 79)

TUESDAY 13 JUNE 2000

MR JAMES HARDING, MR GRAHAM HUTCHINGS AND MS LORNA BALL

Sir Peter Emery

  60. Can I just ask you about jamming. Does the government make any objections to the Chinese government about the jamming of the BBC's transmissions?
  (Ms Ball) It is an issue that has been raised, yes.

  61. But without any success?
  (Ms Ball) As far as we are concerned with no success.

  62. I find what you have said rather depressing, that it has been raised. It is not something that is continually being pushed at the Chinese government, is it?
  (Ms Ball) The Chinese government does not accept that it does jam the BBC or, indeed, other international broadcasters' radio signals.

  63. That is fine, but you can say black is not black and you therefore have to begin by trying to prove to people that they are wrong. It seems to me that there does not appear to be a continuing pressure from the government to try to deal with this problem. Is that a fair or unfair statement to make?
  (Ms Ball) I think it is perhaps slightly unfair. The BBC also has ways of raising this as an issue through the organisation that we deal with that provides us with our shortwave radio transmitters and signals into China. They belong to an international organisation which all countries have representatives attending and they have raised that at an international level with their Chinese colleagues on our behalf. I think it is also a question of how effective we think the government continually raising such an issue would actually be.

  64. It would not embarrass you if we raise this when we are in China ourselves?
  (Ms Ball) I do not think it would embarrass us.

Sir David Madel

  65. What do you think the Chinese leader said to the North Korean leader when he visited Beijing? Do you think he will take any notice? I would like all three of you to answer, please.
  (Ms Ball) I think it would be a brave person who would say that what they said to North Korea is going to be taken very careful heed of. I know that when America was trying to do a deal with North Korea over the provision of power so that the North Koreans would stop using the nuclear sources, there was a fear that it would actually turn into a nuclear missile capability in North Korea, it was hoped that China would put pressure on North Korea to agree to this arrangement. I think the Chinese found it in some ways quite difficult to put that pressure on North Korea as well.
  (Mr Harding) The answer to the first part is I do not know. That is one of the difficulties with this relationship, that whatever is said between Beijing and Pyongyang very few people know the real nature of that relationship. Beijing is perceived to have the best relationship of any foreign government with Pyongyang and that is not saying very much because the amount of influence that Lorna mentioned that they have over Kim Jong-il is pretty limited and actually his primary concerns are his relationships with his army and his capacity to maintain control in North Korea.
  (Mr Hutchings) This is one of the many occasions on which I would have left my tape recorder on inadvertently in the Great Wall of the People and I would have been happily able to tell you what they said to each other. Rather than speculate on that, I think one has to consider the relationship. What are China's interests here with the Korean Peninsula and how can the present leader there satisfy them? I suppose what China fears most—

  66. Is a war?
  (Mr Hutchings) Is the arrival in any form of American influence along the border with China. That would mean unification on South Korean terms would be deeply unsatisfactory to Beijing. It does not want to see that. It does not want to see a war either, as you say. There must be some change in status quo. An impetus for that is coming from Pyongyang, to say nothing of Seoul. Beijing would like to monitor that very carefully and to ensure that there is not a substantial realignment of military forces on the Korean Peninsula.

  67. Is there any evidence to suggest that China is helping other countries to build nuclear warheads and delivery systems? How involved is China in North Korea's nuclear programme?
  (Mr Hutchings) The answer to the first question is yes. I think they have also aided North Korea in the past although I believe with the signing of the 1994 agreement their record is very much better. There have been nuclear programmes in Pakistan. There have been nuclear programmes to the Middle East and even to North Africa in the past.

Dr Starkey

  68. Where in the Middle East?
  (Mr Harding) Iran.

Sir David Madel

  69. If Korea was unified in some way, would Beijing find acceptable a clear American assurance that with reunification no American troops will be stationed north of the 38th Parallel? Would that do as a calming influence?
  (Mr Hutchings) I think the kind of scenario they would be looking for is that if the Peninsula were reunified there would be no need for American troops at all.
  (Mr Harding) One issue that is likely to come up in your visit related to this is the future of TND and the US military strategic interests in that area. We talked in terms of North Korea but, of course, this is highly relevant in terms of how the US plans to act vis a vis Taiwan and China. To a certain extent the deployment of troops on the Korean Peninsula has become a secondary issue in terms of concerns about TND.

Mr Rowlands

  70. I wonder if I could just ask our three witnesses. We wrote a recent report on UK-Russian relations, and I hope I do not do an injustice to the report, the core recommendations were roughly enhanced regional consulates where possible, beef up the British Council and World Service, have constructive engagement in human rights and enhanced trade and commercial staff to match our European partners. Are there any more exciting or interesting ideas on UK-Chinese relations than those we produced on Russia?
  (Mr Harding) Not to sound too flattering, those ideas if you really pushed them through in the Foreign Office are pretty exciting in terms of UK-Chinese relations.

  71. Those core recommendations?
  (Mr Harding) Those core recommendations. Let us take the most contentious one, the human rights one. If there really was powerful advocacy by the British Foreign Office and the embassy and it translated the idea of ethical foreign policy into a clear programme that would be a very exciting project. I agree with the comments Professor Yahuda made about the legal requirements in terms of police detentions but there are also issues about raising specific names and the cases of people in the China Democracy Party who were imprisoned at the end of 1998, the issue of Tibet, how the British Foreign office communicates British opinion on this issue regularly and consistently to its counterparts in China is very important. I suppose the one issue that I would add to your list of four is cultural and educational and do we feel that in the UK there is the kind of exploitation of our strengths as an educational and cultural centre that our counterparts in America are doing. By that I do not mean just transfers of the National Theatre and Royal Opera House productions but given that the greatest common language that possibly the UK and China share is football, how much are we doing about that?

Dr Starkey

  72. What can they teach us?
  (Mr Harding) That is true.
  (Ms Ball) Manchester United's largest fan club in the world is in China.
  (Mr Harding) Things like football, things like Mr Bean are not

  perhaps—It depends on your point of view, I am not going to get into British cultural exports. The issue really is to say how much are we going to promote those sorts of exports in China. We are beginning to do a little. Conversely, how much are we doing to get really large numbers of Chinese students studying in the UK because the appetite for UK study is huge.
  (Mr Hutchings) Those things you mentioned are all extremely worthy and could be usefully enhanced everywhere. I agree very much with the previous speaker about the case concerning China. The message is there, I think, to strengthen what we could call broadly unofficial ties of various kinds, people to people ties, to allow a thickening of relations between the United Kingdom and China. I would add one other general point and one specific point, both equally important. The consequence of this broadening, this thickening, is that it becomes a category as far as the Foreign Office is concerned in its dealing with China, that despite various interests in common, important interests such as commerce, weapons proliferation, environmental protection, there cannot really be happy and satisfactory relations between the UK and China given the way the Chinese government treats many of its people. That is a given. The specific issue which I said was equally important concerns an addition to those you mentioned, it concerns Taiwan. The case for extending diplomatic recognition to Beijing and denying it to Taipei is, I think, an unfortunate one but a necessary one. It does not follow from that that Britain cannot affirm what has happened in Taiwan, which is a very extraordinary thing, the move inside ten years towards genuine democracy conducted in a peaceful environment. That should matter, that is in British interests, that is something about which the British Government and the British people can identify. In its relationship with Beijing it should be made clear that Britain would regard that as a fundamental set-up in its relations with China broadly conceived were democracy to be threatened, undermined in any way, by Chinese belligerence.

  73. Thank you very much. You have underlined or underscored the rather healthy scepticism that exists in your submission to us. I want to ask the other two witnesses how much they agree with your assessment. Mr Hutchings says, for example, "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." He then goes on to say why should we not receive a Taiwanese government democratically elected President in the United Kingdom instead of ignoring them. Do the other two witnesses agree with the pitch that Mr Hutchings has been making in his memorandum and in most of his remarks this morning?
  (Mr Harding) Yes, I agree. Firstly, I would like to say I agree fundamentally with the point about democratic transition in Taiwan and that our concerns about how any commentary would be interpreted in Beijing means that probably in the past we have been mealy mouthed about the very considerable achievement of democracy and de facto independence in Taiwan. The myth of the billion person market, absolutely. This picks up the question Dr Starkey asked about the internet. We must realise that at the end of last year there were two million users and this year there are five million, next year it will be moving towards ten million users, so a fraction of the country when you think about the market. If you go and speak to the likes of Unilever or P&G they are really only talking about a market of 150 million people. This is for shampoos, soaps and toothpaste. In the sense that this is a billion person market, yes, it will be but not for a generation at the earliest. The extent to which policy is made and the policy makers are deferential towards Beijing, on the basis of that it is very dangerous and potentially damaging to Taiwan.

  74. Do all of you agree with that assessment?
  (Ms Ball) Yes, I do. I think the myth of the 1.2 or the 1.3 billion market is indeed largely a myth. If you ask any of the Western companies just how much profit they are making from China I think you would be surprised at some of the answers. Although they do regard it as an important market, it is much smaller than we commonly think of. It is very competitive. I have alluded to the competitive media but it is very competitive in all of its products, not least because China is still a developing and sometimes quite a poor country that varies from place to place. People do not have the disposable income to spend on huge amounts of consumer goodies, although I am sure in time maybe that will come.

  Mr Rowlands: One final question, if I may. I have been reading this book, The Era of Jiang Zemin, it is dense, extremely detailed and I am sure it is invaluable.

  Dr Starkey: But boring.

Mr Rowlands

  75. When I get through it. I am getting the impression from this book that he represents a bit of a throw back and this is not real progress and that the reforms and the changes, political reforms, are putting the brake on reforms, restoring more and more the Communist Party back into the centre of things even if it was only just marginally pushed out. May I ask the political commentators what their assessment of the present leadership in China is?
  (Mr Hutchings) When Jiang Zemin was first appointed one of his earliest remarks, perhaps little noticed at the time, was to refer to his predecessor, and he said that Zhao Ziyang made political mistakes but it is something he would not do. He was referring specifically to what the Communist Party calls bourgeois liberalisation, those things that we recognise as the beginnings of individual freedom, of pluralism and democracy. What he has done, rather remarkably, again with little notice because of his somewhat dour although occasionally clownish public image, is to preside over continued economic growth and yet to have preserved the party state as still a formidable organisation, not as powerful as it was ten years ago, and, if things continue as they are, not as powerful in ten years time as it is now. He has essentially preserved the authority of the party state, its ability to cope with most major organised crises and threats to the Communist Party system. The question now at issue amongst those of us who derive pleasure from earning a living out of following Chinese politics is what he will do when the Party Congress meets in 2002. There are some indications that he will indeed formally retire, by which time he will be in his mid-70s, and a successor, Mr Hu Jintao, has been lined up to take over. There are strong indications that he will follow in the footsteps of his own mentor, Deng Xiaoping, and formally retire but retain a powerful behind the scenes influence. This will disappoint you but I think the era of Jiang Zemin is going to last for quite a while.

  76. I should persevere with the book obviously.
  (Mr Harding) I hope Jiang Zemin retires before you finish the book. I agree with what Graham was saying. I just ask the question what is Jiang Zemin's mission? If Mao Tse-tung was the man who, using the Chinese term for this, helped the Chinese people stand up and Deng Xiaoping was the man who set China on the path of prosperity, what is Jiang Zemin going to do? This seems to me to be the question that he is still struggling to answer. While he has maintained party control, as Graham mentioned, all he has been is a pragmatist. He comes from the wind faction, he blows with the wind. He has managed the difficulties of political life in Beijing very deftly and survived far longer than many people expected. Ultimately there is a question about what is his legacy going to be. Again, we return to Taiwan because the concern with Taiwan following the return of Hong Kong was having presided over the return of Hong Kong he immediately raised expectations that Taiwan would follow and return to the motherland quickly and that is going to be very difficult. Having raised those expectations how does he now deliver them?
  (Ms Ball) I think Jiang Zemin's position in this is crucial because no Chinese leader will want to go down in history as the person who lost Taiwan because Taiwan is a crown jewel: Macao, Taiwan and Hong Kong. I think whatever Jiang Zemin's legacy it will be tied up with the position over Taiwan. I think also the economic progress in China which we have focused on but also the huge social dislocation. One of Jiang Zemin's biggest accomplishments in that is his continuing line of maintaining the Communist Party in as much power as it still wields but the contradiction that Professor Yahuda spoke about before is acute in China, social dislocation. At the heart of China there is an ideological vacuum, whether it is a political vacuum, a vacuum of spirituality, there is something that is missing which is quite hard to put your finger on, but I think the recent rapid growth and arrests of the leader of the spiritual leader of Falun Gong is one indicator of that. I think that is part of Jiang Zemin's legacy as well. The Communist Party remains in power, economic development has continued but the social dislocation is enormous. The question of why is the Communist Party in power if it is not Communism that people are turning to, if it is some form of capitalism that attaches to the Communist Party, and whether that actually means ideologically the Communist Party, on what basis is it still in power?

Mr Chidgey

  77. I would like to put this concept to all three of our witnesses. You heard Professor Yahuda this morning making a comment that there had been significant if not great progress on human rights in China in the last 20 years and yet we have evidence from the Government in their submission and they say: "the human rights situation in China remains a matter of serious concern to HMG. Over the last two years there has been a marked deterioration in the respect of key civil and political rights including the freedoms of expression, assembly, association, conscience and religion". The first question is who is right? The most important thing about that, because we could go on all day, is if that has been developing in these key human rights aspects in China to whatever degree, how much of that is due to the evolution of China's society, politically and civil, and how much is it due to the pressure politically and economically that has been exerted by the West? Perhaps, Mr Harding, you would like to start on that?
  (Mr Harding) I think that on the specific issue about over the last two years, HMG is right.

  78. So again we are going backwards?
  (Mr Harding) I think they have back pedalled over the last two years particularly if you look at the case of the China Democracy Party, which was established in the second half of 1998 and was never in any way a credible threat to the Communist Party in China but Jiang Zemin went out of his way to round up the 13 leaders. This was after Bill Clinton had been, after Wang Dan had been released, after they had got good publicity about improvements in human rights, there was then the clamp down on the China Democracy Party. This is a point of considerable concern given the length of the prison sentences that were meted out to the 13 leaders in the China Democracy Party. Falun Gong as well has been a remarkable illustration both of the anxieties of the Chinese leadership but also its willingness to use force to suppress anything that resembles a gathering of Chinese people that is not organised by the authority. Yes, there is a roll back. The second question is very difficult. Fundamentally China will change itself, it will not be changed.

  79. Thank you. It brings in the question of whether this whole business of huge economic opportunity both ways is indeed a myth in terms of a change in China?
  (Mr Harding) China will change itself. One of the great changes of the last generation has been opening up to the rest of the world and in that process in the exchange of opinions, people and relationships of course attitudes change. I suppose what I am saying when I say that China will change itself is not that foreign governments can lay down the rules, of course they cannot, but what they can do is set standards. I think to leave China to go its own course is as irresponsible as it is to assume that you can tell China what to do.


 
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