Labour’s attempts to normalise relations with China ignore human rights concerns and are economically pointless, experts warn.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy is set to be quizzed over the UK’s China strategy by MPs when he speaks to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Concerns have already been raised by the Committee’s Labour chair, former shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, over concerns that verdicts and 10-year sentences handed out last week to 45 pro-democracy demonstrators were “clear violations of the Sino-British joint declaration on Hong Kong”.
MPs will also focus on last week’s private bilateral meeting between Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping – which took place just a day before the sentencings.
Only last month, MI5 chief Ken McCallum outlined the “threat that manifests at scale” from China, targeting Britain’s information and democracy.
Chinese agents are believed to have approached some 20,000 people in the UK over professional networking sites like LinkedIn, in order to try to cultivate them to provide sensitive information.
Other alarming developments include the placing of $1m bounties by Beijing last year on 13 pro-democracy students – six of which live in the UK – the discovery of Chinese “secret police stations” in Britain and the sanctioning by China of seven MPs and peers over criticism of the CCP.
And last night one of the Hong Kong dissidents with a price on his head revealed how he had narrowly escaped a suspected kidnap plot on British soil.
While the Government has yet to conduct a full audit of its China policy, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has stated he wants to establish a working relationship with China after Rishi Sunak termed the country “Britain’s greatest economic threat”
In October David Lammy became only the second foreign secretary in six years to visit China in a low- key meeting with his powerful counterpart, Wang Yi, and Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang.
Following the meeting he said he was “struck by the scope for mutually beneficial cooperation on the climate, on energy and nature, of the science and tech, on trade and investment, on health and development.”
But the visit brought accusations that he was backtracking on pre-election promises to push the international courts to declare China’s treatment of the Uighur minority as genocide.
“The sentencing happened just one day after the meeting between the Starmer and Xi. Starmer claimed that he shared his concern about Chinese human rights violations, and their response was to ignore it,” said Finn Lau, one of the activists with a bounty over his head.
“This shows how impractical Starmer’s approach is.
“The CCP’s handling of Hong Kong reflects the way it treats any kind of international treaty .There is no reason to suppose this would change over climate issues. “
He revealed that he had already fended off a potential kidnap attempt when he was approached by a fake journalist and Chinese asset pretending to work for Radio Free Asia.
“The police have given me advice but have not offered security. I just have to be careful,” he added.
Source: Daily Express