'No, Lord Mandelson, we don’t need to cosy up to Xi’s China', Benedict Rogers

Peter Mandelson’s intervention on China policy this week is profoundly wrong – and potentially very dangerous.

During a visit to Hong Kong in which he met government officials, top businessmen and bankers, and gave a speech at the University of Hong Kong, Lord Mandelson claimed that the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary in the city are intact and he blamed the previous Conservative government for initiating a ‘boycott’ of Hong Kong and failing to sustain ‘proper channels of communication’ with Beijing. He said that the new Labour government wished to ‘recreate the strategic dialogue that Britain has had with China in the past’, after ‘many years of a very poor, deteriorating relationship’, adding that it was time for both countries to ‘stop throwing mud’ at each other. That sounds perilously close to the failed so-called ‘golden era’ of Sino-British relations pursued by David Cameron’s government – which of course was first started by Lord Mandelson.

One has to ask: what planet is Lord Mandelson living on?

Let’s take these points one by one, in reverse order.

First, the reason the relationship has deteriorated in recent years is because of the increasingly belligerent, bellicose, repressive and aggressive behaviour of the current Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing, led by Xi Jinping. 

Over the past five years particularly, Xi’s regime has been credibly accused of genocide against the Uyghurs by both the previous and current US administrations, several parliaments around the world including our own, and an independent tribunal chaired by the lawyer who prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic, Sir Geoffrey Nice KC. 

It has dismantled Hong Kong’s promised freedoms, human rights, the rule of law and autonomy, ripping up an international treaty, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in the process. 

It has intensified its repression of dissent and its crackdown on religion across China, including the barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. 

Beijing’s atrocities in Tibet have continued, with revelations that at least a million Tibetan children have been coercively separated from their families into colonial boarding schools which prohibit them from learning Tibetan language, practising Tibetan Buddhism or living their Tibetan culture. But of course, Lord Mandelson has long shown a disregard for Tibet.

China’s aggression towards Taiwan has intensified and its threats to our national security through espionage, infiltration, influence operations and intimidation campaigns have increased. 

And let’s not forget the CCP’s responsibility for unleashing upon the world the Covid-19 pandemic that destroyed hundreds of millions of lives and livelihoods, through its irresponsible lies, cover-ups and repression of whistleblowers.

So there are good reasons relations deteriorated, and the blame lies in Beijing not in London. In Lord Mandelson’s view this is ‘throwing mud’, but it is really simply pointing out the facts.

Let’s turn to his second allegation: that the previous Conservative government was ‘in danger of operating a boycott of Hong Kong’. That is an absolute lie – and totally unnecessarily politicises what has always been an issue that has commanded broad cross-party support.

The last government did one thing for which it deserves great credit, and that was the introduction of the British National Overseas (BNO) scheme. This provided a pathway for potentially several million Hong Kongers to flee Hong Kong and build a new life in freedom in the United Kingdom. 

That scheme was announced by Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab the day after the imposition by Beijing of a new, draconian National Security Law upon Hong Kong which destroyed the city’s freedoms, and it was championed and implemented by Priti Patel. Eligibility for the scheme was further extended, after much advocacy from the last Governor of Hong Kong Lord Patten and Lord Alton, both Patrons of the organisation I co-founded, Hong Kong Watch, and the last government should be applauded for the measures they took to offer Hong Kongers a future.

But don’t be in any doubt: that scheme drew enormous support from across all parties and both Houses of Parliament. 

Moreover, the Labour Party in opposition were vocal in pushing the government at the time to go further and to be more robust on human rights in China. David Lammy, Catherine West, Stephen Kinnock, Lord Collins and plenty of other Labour Parliamentarians, frontbench and backbench, as well as friends from the Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationalists and other parties were allies in the effort to put some spine into the back of the last government. Lammy said he would call out the genocide of the Uyghurs if in government – one of the many promises the new government has u-turned on in the past two months.

Far from operating a ‘boycott’ of Hong Kong, the last government refused to implement any sanctions in response to Beijing’s breaches of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and instead sent at least two ministers – the then Trade Minister Lord (Dominic) Johnson and Foreign Office Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan – to the city. While they may have made platitudinal remarks about human rights, the focus of both visits was increasing trade. And the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly made a much-trumpeted – or at least much-tweeted – visit to Beijing for the same purpose.

Human rights in China and Hong Kong is not – and should not be – a party political matter. I have my criticisms of the previous government and my concerns about the current government’s approach. But I also have many friends on all sides who share the same view. Lord Mandelson trying to weaponise this issue as a stick with which to beat the Conservatives and a wedge to drive between the parties is wicked.

Finally, to the absurdity of his suggestion that the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary in Hong Kong is still intact, I make simply three points.

First, read this article by Lord Sumption, who finally made the decision to quit sitting in Hong Kong’s courts. He says this: ‘Hong Kong, once a vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state. The rule of law is profoundly compromised in any area about which the government feels strongly.’

Second, follow the case of my friend Jimmy Lai, the 76-year-old British citizen and media entrepreneur who has been in jail for more than three and a half years on multiple trumped-up charges including serving 13 months for lighting a candle and saying a prayer at a peaceful vigil to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. 

As I wrote earlier this week, Mr Lai – a devout Catholic – has reportedly been denied Communion since last December, is held in solitary confinement for more than 23 hours a day, denied access to independent medical care and has very limited access to human contact or daylight. As his international legal team at Doughty Street Chambers – where the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer KC practised – said yesterday at the United Nations, Mr Lai’s continued arbitrary detention raises grave concerns.

Mr Lai is still on trial under the National Security Law, and could face life imprisonment. Several foreign nationals, including myself, have been named as collaborators with him in his trial. None of us – despite appeals from Parliamentarians in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) – have been called to give evidence. Mr Lai’s entire trial is a travesty of justice, especially as he was denied his first choice of legal counsel. What kind of rule of law or judicial independence is that?

And third, just look at the multitude of other cases. The fact that 47 former elected legislators and activists were arrested for holding a primary election to choose their candidates for what should have been Hong Kong’s Legislative Council elections; the fact that the editors of Stand News were convicted of sedition last month; the crackdown on press freedom and closure of Mr Lai’s Apple Daily in 2021; and the fact that in Hong Kong today, if you wear a T-shirt of a particular colour or sing a particular song, you can be arrested and jailed – what kind of rule of law is that, Lord Mandelson?

In a fig-leaf to those who believe in human rights and democracy, the former British First Secretary of State, Trade Secretary and European Union Trade Secretary said he did think that the Hong Kong authorities should ‘tread lightly on people’s lives’. Tell that to Jimmy Lai. Tell that to the Stand News editors. Tell that to the hundreds of political prisoners in jail in Hong Kong today. Lord Mandelson, you can do better than that.

Few would dispute that we must talk to Beijing. Certainly I do not advocate disengagement. But the question for me is not whether to engage but how, and I am certain that we achieve nothing by kowtowing, diluting, denying, undermining or surrendering our values or by varnishing our differences. While they may not like it, the CCP respects us more if we stand up for what we believe in, rather than – as long-time American businessman James McGregor put it nearly a decade ago – ‘acting like a panting puppy’.

Other failed politicians have attempted to cosy up to Beijing. Think Vince Cable. Think George Osborne. But what makes Lord Mandelson’s intervention dangerous is that he has the ear of the new Prime Minister and is spoken of as a candidate to be either UK Ambassador to the United States or Chancellor of Oxford University. If he continues acting like a ‘panting puppy’ with regard to China, he should be disqualified from both positions and left to shout on the sidelines. His analysis of and partisanship in matters of China policy profoundly discredit him and endanger our national interest and values.

This article was published in CapX on 19 September 2024.