China: Human Rights

Lord Watson of Richmond: My Lords, I, too, congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for having made this debate possible on a very important subject and at a critical phase. I should say right at the start that my remarks may strike a rather different note from the speeches that preceded mine. That is not because I do not recognise the civil rights and human rights abuses in China-I absolutely do, and I deplore them-but because I think it more important at this juncture to try and focus on the forces and motors for change in China and in Chinese policy and to try and see how those can be usefully assisted from our perspective.

1 visited Shanghai for the first time last November. I had been to China a good number of times but never to Shanghai. Like many people, including many noble Lords who have been to Shanghai, I was startled by the city's exuberance and the sheer momentum of what is going on there. It is very striking.

I was, incidentally, pleased to see that the Bund on the riverfront is now protected. It gives the city, despite the skyscrapers, a really important and distinctive visual character. It also says something quite important about the international nature of Shanghai. I feel that there may be something in the Chinese scene whereby Shanghai plays a role slightly akin to that of St Petersburg in Russia. It is the international opening and a very important city in that context. It is certainly an important prism through which to view some of the issues in this debate on, "China's role in promoting and respecting human rights". Why? Shanghai demonstrates China's determination to make capitalism work for it. We may find that a strange and contradictory concept but it is the reality. The Chinese are not playing with capitalism; they want it to work and they believe that it is the essential method by which China's living standards will be raised. Secondly, it shows China's clear demonstration intention, Shanghai being such ap international city, to be massively active as an investor, importer and exporter in global markets.

Why are these factors so crucial for human rights and developments in human rights? It is because they are the motors of change, and change is what we need to see in Chinese civil society. We should never underestimate the rapidity of change. I was in Shanghai to lecture at the Shanghai International Studies University, which is one of the focus points in China for the acquisition of foreign languages. I would remind your Lordships that some 300 million people are studying English in China. The reason for that focus on the English language-which of course carries many values of civil society within the language-is their determination to succeed individually and collectively as part of a globalised economy. As for internal change and human rights in China, I think there has been one reference so far in the debate to China's membership of the WTO, which started in 2001-not all that long ago. Part of China's commitment in its acquisition of WTO membership was a commitment to, "establish a law-based society".

It is important, in seeing where we go from this point, to understand the extent to which China's commercial and entrepreneurial ambition has as its concomitant a recognition of the need to create a civil society and a law-based society. I believe that there is clear evidence of recognition of the interconnection between those two things. While it is right that we condemn abuses, it is also important to encourage progress.

Secondly, I believe that the involvement of the Communist Party in China in its entrepreneurial development-contradictory though we may find this needs to be welcomed. The party congress in 2002 accepted entrepreneurs as party members in mainland China, and this has had a dramatic impact. More recently, we have seen increasing numbers of private companies in China establishing party committees as part of their management structure. We could arrive at a sinister explanation of those developments, but I would rather see the Communist Party of China described, as it was recently in the Financial Times, as the world's largest holding company than as the dictatorship of the proletariat. What of China's influence and role in promoting human rights? The point has already been vividly and powerfully made that China plays an increasingly important role as an investor in construction and an importer of raw materials. The figures are quite extraordinary China is doubling its imports of minerals, oil and energy year on year. That has a paradoxical impact on us: whereas cheap products from China are, in price terms, deflationary in the West, the import of raw materials by China is now a very important inflationary force within the western economies.

The fact is that China is playing a huge role as an investor and importer. There is great sensitivity in terms of the abuse of human rights Zimbabwe has already been mentioned, as have Sudan and Darfur. China can and should-and we hope it will-use this influence positively. I sense that the Chinese authorities are aware of the importance of this dimension of foreign policy but they have not yet focused on it. The time has now arrived. We have seen in North Korea how very beneficial China's influence can be. Equally, we have been very disappointed by its lack of involvement in Burma.

I end with two questions for the Minister. Will Her Majesty's Government continue to monitor and urge China's fulfilment of its WTO commitment to a law-based society? Will they make that a regular part of our agenda of dialogue with the Chinese Government? Secondly, will we use our ongoing bilateral and very intense dialogue with China-the forthcoming visit by the Prime Minister is a good example to urge it, as a matter of its maturity and status in the international community, to use its influence for good where it makes major foreign investments? This will be important to China's status and credibility in the future.