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.
Another, Simon Cheng – co-founder of the group Hongkongers in Britain -said: “We are very disappointed by this Government’s approach. It is especially damning since Keir Starmer’s former chambers are actively defending Hong Kong activists.”
He confirmed he and other dissidents had been invited to meet Foreign Office officials next week , when they will express their frustration at the Government’s new approach
“This Government wants to prioritise trade , but will closer trade links really benefit the majority of Britons, or just a small elite?
“Human nights can’t be traded off -they must remain a fundamental principle .”
The main problem is that the Government knows little about China, said former diplomat Charles Parton, who spent 22 years of his 37 year career working in or on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“Policy on China isn’t directed by the FCDO, but by the Treasury, and that’s a problem,” he said.
“There are only three civil servants at director general level who know anything about China – one is in Beijing, one is in the UN and the other is currently on language training. “
He said transactional China has shown it will continue to trade whatever its political relations with other nations, adding: ” In fact, the only time exports to China have gone down was during our so-called Golden Age.
“Export to China grew last year with no need of a new policy.”
Referring to the bounties , he added: “There is no reason to believe that the CCP would behave any differently abroad to how it behaves in China,
“Chinese diplomats even ushered the press away during Xis all with Starmer .This is how they behave, they do not respect international conventions.
“If the CCP feels it has a strong hand, it doesn’t have to make any effort. “
Mathew Henderson, another former British diplomat who served for 30 years in China and Asia, said: “This Government is making overtures to a nation that placed secret police stations in Britain.
“With Hong Kong now terrorised and defenceless in the face of the Party’s cruel pretence of ‘justice’, is it any wonder that Taiwan now sets such store by its present freedom and democracy?
“Any Western official who seeks to discuss this miserable situation with the Chinese government must now realise that doing so, however morally necessary, is ultimately futile. “