China's stance on 'threat' posed by grannies shows it's no friend of UK
China remains grimly authoritarian and surprisingly petty
He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon. In an age where old alliances – and indeed our reliance on the United States as the leader of Western democracy – are coming into question, common sense dictates that we seek common interest where we can find it.
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs launched against friend and foe alike (if the United States still distinguishes between the two) last month has led many people to look to China as a potential counter to these new trade barriers.
That is perhaps understandable; China is the second-largest national economy and, for decades, has been a leading manufacturer. We have a shared interest in free trade – why not work together?
Events in the last week, however, ought to be a warning to those who want to treat Beijing as our new best friend. On both the geopolitical and the personal level, China remains grimly authoritarian – and surprisingly petty.
Grave threat posed by grannies
My colleague Wera Hobhouse MP can affirm that latter point from personal experience. Last weekend, having planned to use the Easter holidays to visit her newborn grandson in Hong Kong, she found herself in a questioning room, held for several hours and then barred from the supposedly “autonomous” territory.
Wera was given no reason for the block but, as a longstanding critic of the myriad human rights abuses in China, I think we can come to our own conclusions. No doubt “free speech advocate” and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch would say that China, like Israel, has the right to ban our MPs, so there is nothing to see here.
Wera is never afraid to speak her mind but this was hardly a political visit. I hope that the regime in Beijing feels very pleased with itself for having seen off the grave threat of grandmothers visiting newborn babies.
British Steel shutdown
That news of course came hot on the heels of our own government’s move to take operational control of British Steel from its Chinese owner, which appeared to be making moves to shutter – irreversibly – the last producer of virgin steel in the UK.
It would be easy to treat these moves as simple commercial decisions, but it is also a basic fact that any Chinese company is required by law to follow the instructions of the Chinese government when asked. It took us long years to recognise the risks of handing over major sections of our critical national infrastructure to Chinese-owned companies – and we are still unpicking the consequences.
The lesson from the last week is not that we can never cooperate with the regime in Beijing – but we cannot afford complacency about their agenda, any more than we can with Donald Trump.
The new administration in the United States is an immediate and urgent threat to global trade and any number of other vital issues to the UK, but that should not make us blind to other dangers in the short- and long-term.
We cannot afford to treat every country with which we disagree as enemies – but shared interest does not make us friends either. If we are going to continue to work with countries like China, we had best crack out the long-handled silverware.
Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
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