We can stand up to China by embracing Hong Kong’s talent
IF YOU want to understand why an ever-growing number of MPs are demanding the Government provides a legally-binding date by which Chinese company Huawei is stripped from the UK’s 5G network, think back to the Cold War.
Imagine if, at the height of the conflict, we had let a Soviet outfit install and run our phone network. Imagine further that, when there was widespread astonishment at the decision, the response was that it was fine because it was entirely separate from the Soviet state. It just happened its head was previously a senior telecoms engineer in the Red Army.
You can’t imagine it, can you? Because the very notion is ludicrous. Yes, there was Soviet infiltration. But it was covert and unwelcome.We didn’t willingly hand ourselves over to USSR front institutions and ask them to get on with it.
And yet that is what we have done in approving Huawei to deliver the implementation of our 5G network, vital to the future of the economy.
BUT the issue goes a lot further and deeper than Huawei or 5G. For years we have, entirely voluntarily, made ourselves ever more dependent on Chinese companies and investment.
Take universities. Twenty per cent of income in the leading institutions, the Russell Group, comes from Chinese students and sponsorship. That has a direct impact on how they operate. Last month Chinese students at the University of Warwick voted down a student motion supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
The combination of China’s plan to snuffle out Hong Kong’s democracy and its obfuscation over the coronavirus crisis has woken many people up. In what seems like another era, the then chancellor, George Osborne, visited China in 2015 to hail a “golden era” of Sino-British relations. Too many people fell for the lure of China’s vast wealth, ignoring its human rights abuses and a determination to destroy theWest.
Few people seem ever to have paid attention to what Chinese president Xi Jinping, now enshrined as leader for life, says, because he has always been clear. In his first speech as leader, in 2013, he spoke of the “long-term struggle between the two social systems… Most importantly, we must concentrate our efforts on… building a socialism that is superior to capitalism, and laying the foundation for a future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position”.
And yet instead of disentangling ourselves from Chinese involvement in Britain, we have chosen to accelerate it.
At last, however, reality seems to be dawning. In the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, Baroness Thatcher’s government behaved appallingly, betraying more than three million Hong Kong holders of British National Overseas passports by refusing entry to Britain – even though China’s ruthlessness was clear.
In Tiananmen Square, thousands of people had been slaughtered in June 1989 by the “People’s Liberation Army”.
But in a welcome and important move, Boris Johnson has now said that if the Chinese go ahead with their “anti-subversion” laws in Hong Kong, we will extend UK visa rights not only to its 350,000 BNO passport holders but also to the three million Hong Kong citizens who were born under British rule but who have let their passports lapse.
This is both principled and self-interested because nothing would bolster our prosperity more than an influx of some of the most educated, energetic and entrepreneurial people on
‘Nothing would bolster our prosperity more than influx of entrepreneurs’
Earth. When we refused them visas in the 1990s, many went instead to Canada and they have had a transformative effect on the Canadian economy.
As it always does, China has reacted with anger. When Australia suggested an inquiry into China’s handling of coronavirus, the Chinese responded by banning Australian meat imports. There is widespread worry about the economic consequences of standing up to China. A recent paper by Beijing-based American scholar, Michael Pettis, however, shows that the benefits of Chinese investment are largely a myth.
AND as Charles Parton, a former diplomat, has shown, the evidence is clear that even when we are punished by China, it has little impact. The UK, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Canada have all been subject to sanctions of some kind for daring to stand up to China.And in every case, their exports have risen.
We need to stand up to China. The evidence shows that we can do so without losing economically. And, as we carve out a new global role after Brexit, our international standing would benefit enormously.