Former Tory leader sighs on the naive misjudgment of the West regarding the Chineses’ ongoing autocracy 

“Sometimes people would forget that China was once a closed country.” Former leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom Sir Iain Duncan Smith talked about his time in Beijing 30 years ago in his interview with Stand News. Back then, China was still closed and western faces were still rare to see in Beijing. 

To date, that was his last visit to China and it was probably his last. 

Today, 103 Members of the Parliament (MPs) wrote to the Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson. They demanded the British Government to sanction the senior Hong Kong government officials in response to China’s sanction on British MPs on 25 March. Smith was one of the six sanctioned. From a family with three generations having lived in China, Smith was prohibited from entering China.

Smith was not surprised at all as he thought the sanction was almost inevitable. 

Smith was 67 years old. He has been a member of the House of Commons since 1992. He was the Leader of the Conservative Party from 2001 to 2003. He held the position of Secretary of State for Work and Pensions between 2010 and 2016.

Since last year, as a co-chairman of Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), Smith has been proposing to “reposition the relationship with China” to the UK parliament and international political leaders. For multiple times on various major British newspapers, Smith strongly condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for committing genocide in Xinjiang. He described the CCP as the “worst dictator of the 20th Century”. Regarding Hong Kong, the IPAC stated multiple times that China was depriving it of the high level of autonomy it once enjoyed.

His political stance towards China obviously touched its sensitive nerve.

His historical ties with China

“Our family has strong ties with China,” Smith said. His attention to China rooted long before its economic rise and its appearance in the eyes of the West. Smith’s great-grandfather had lived and done business for a long period in South China during the 19th century and spent his final days in Foshan, Guangdong province. Smith’s grandmother was born and grew up in China. Smith’s mother and her brother were also born during the rule of thumb Republic of China (ROC). They returned to Britain in the early 1930s.

Smith said his grandfather knew China very well. His grandfather left his footprints almost everywhere in this vast country and even designed a postal code system for it. In the 1930s, his grandfather was very optimistic about the future of China.

Smith recalled his grandfather’s words, “China will become a strong and stable country.”

Smith himself did not come to China until a business trip in the mid late 1980s. The China he witnessed, the one his grandfather saw and the one we know today are totally three different entities.

“In the 80s, there were only a few hotels in Beijing accepting foreign guests. We could not book a room in these hotels but later found a brand new one to stay. According to hearsay it was refurbished from a secret police headquarter. When you walked in it you knew they were not used to foreign tourists. To them we were different but I liked that very much.”

The China he saw was a closed country where even wearing jeans was considered adoring Western culture. All Smith saw was poverty.

“I cannot see how China can enter the world stage and occupy a seat.” That was his thoughts 30 years ago.

A common karma of the West for misjudging China’s economic development

However, the opening of China enabled its economy to vastly progress. The West had to assess China thoroughly again. On this point, Smith believed the West made a “lazy assumption” about China that an open market and free economy will lead to the freedom and liberty in the country. The logic they followed was that free trade would go parallel with a democratic system.

“Trade will change China and liberate it from a communist autocratic regime and even towards democracy”. So they “hurried to trade with China, built contractual relationships and grabbed cheap goods.”

Now the human right issues in Tibet and Xinjiang got the whole world boiling. However, in Smith’s eyes, these problems did not appear overnight. What has been happening was that whenever they raised such issues and China would respond and in the end they would conclude with “Okay, let’s continue with business”. All this time no one ever took the human rights issues in China seriously.

“This is a naive way of thinking.” He admitted 30 years later. 

In the past few decades, enormous amount of cash flowed into China and it became a vast economic entity. However it was not “liberated from the communist and autocratic regime”. Instead it became the biggest international strategic threat in the eyes of many Western countries. 

All these might have been carved in history. “China’s current attitude is that it should return to its ‘destined leading position’ like the concept of “country in the centre of the world” in Chinese history.” Smith remembered what his grandfather had always told him that “China is used to approve ultimate authoritarianism.” Starting in the 20th century, from the warlord era to the establishment the Republic of China and from that to rise of the communist, “China never underwent the stage of constructing liberty and democracy. China has always been ruled by autocrats and liberty and democracy never rooted.

Along these historical trends, Smith deduced that his sanction was not surprising at all. “Internally China always oppresses its citizens and any criticism and even arrests dissidents. China just thinks this same tricks can also work overseas.”

“It is very clear now. China doesn’t accept coexistence with the West. It is determined to direct and control other free countries. The burning question to the West is how to handle China.”

The UK kept its China policies ambiguous

Smith’s answer to this is that the West should overhaul their economic policies, reduce its reliance on Chinese market and reinvest in free countries of similar values and visions. “It is time to unite and give China a clear message. ‘China must obey the disciplines of the world, the disciplines based on rules.’”

Having said that, the PM Boris Johnson seemed to have a different idea. 

Two days after the sanction on Smith and other MPs, Johnson had a meeting with them. “I decisively support them and the other British citizens China has sanctioned,” he said. However, when Johnson published the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy on 15 March, he stated the British economy “needs to be in contact with China and keep its trade and investment open with China”. He further added that Britain “should further proactively strengthen its economic ties with China”.

This document was tersely criticised as naïve. Steve Tsang, director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, commented that Johnson was keeping his usual Cakeism (to eat and keep a piece of cake at the same time). In other words, he was trying to take advantages of the relationship with China but was reluctant to face the down sides. Tsang described Johnson as attempting to “stand on two boats with one foot”. “He can ‘stand’ now, but for how long?”

In fact, the ambiguity of British’s China policy was not new. The year 2015 marked the golden age of Sino-British relationship. In October 2015, chairman Xi visited Britain, the first Chinese leaders in ten years. George Osborne, then member of cabinet and Chancellor of the Exchequer, claimed that “Britain is China’s best partner in the West.” At the beginning of 2020, Wuhan pneumonia pandemic broke out in Britain. Public opinions at all levels casted the blame on China. Then came more and more voices saying Britain should wake up to the fact that China was not a reliable business partner.

Led by Smith, a group of “rebellious” Conservative MPs toughened their stance on topics of China. They led the campaign to ban Huawei from taking part in the development of 5G network in Britain. In July of the same year the British Government announced the prohibition of Huawei from joining the project.

Smith also promoted that Britain should ban Tiktok as its threat was the same as Huawei. However, this time the British Government turned a cold shoulder. In fact, Tiktok rented an office in recent months in prepare for a big launch. 

Smith proposed an amendment to a bill in the House of Commons last month. The amendment included stopping the British government from trading with countries involved with genocide. It demanded all trade deals by the government be examined by legal experts so as to determine whether the trading partner executed genocides.  The amendment did not explicitly say which country but it was obvious. Secretary of State for Trade Greg Hands emphasized that the government was against the amendment, stating that it “blurred legislature with judiciary”. The amendment lost the vote by 318 versus 300. After that Smith criticized the British government as “exhausting all means to avoid offending China.”

“The attitude of he British government has always been ‘Whenever there are diplomatic issues, we ignore them’” said Smith. “I believe this is because Britain is too naïve but it thinks it’s clever.”

“I won’t be scared off”

Smith did not have any asset in China. However, this sanction deprived him of any future chance to visit China. More or less, China was part of the history of his family.

He said decisively, “I have no intention to visit China again anyway.”

“This sanction shows that China created a diplomatic disaster. Their actions proved exactly that they need to hide something.”

“I won’t be scared off. I will only carry on with what I’m doing. Together with other members of the IPAC, we will continue to attend to and handle Chinese matters even if that implies more of us will be sanctioned.”

“Some ‘things’ just don’t get what freedom of speech is.”

Source：Standnews #Apr15

#China #HongKong #Sanction #IPAC #CCP

https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/專訪-英保守黨前主席被華制裁-嘆西方天真錯判-施志安-中國一直獨裁/