The Cabinet’s lack of real world experience has left them vulnerable to Xi’s manipulation.
As the Chinese Foreign Secretary Wang Yi arrives in the UK, following David Lammy and the Prime Minister’s visit to Beijing, I think it is fair to ask what the Government’s real policy is when it comes to China.
After all, when in Opposition their front bench was robust about the threats China posed and often voted along with the Conservative government in debates on slave labour, genocide and the arrest of peaceful democracy campaigners in Hong Kong.
Yet that stance appears to belong to the past. Labour’s China policy is now undergoing a brazen, tyre screeching, handbrake-clutching U-turn.
Before the last election the Conservatives realised that the Osbourne “golden era” policy, which promised to bring huge investment but which instead just made us more dependent on Chinese goods, had failed. Indeed, it was apparent the threat from the Chinese government was ramping up.
After all, there is no ignoring the nature of a country that commits genocide on its own people, which has torn up the Sino-British agreement on Hong Kong, uses slave labour, trashes the WTO trading rules by subsidising Chinese companies, and threatens to invade Taiwan.
Yet despite all the evidence of the threat China poses, when the Prime Minister met President Xi in Rio, his tone was supplicatory, almost apologetic, as he stated his desire for this mammoth reset in relations. To prove this, he said, in his best Uriah Heap tones, the Government had called in the Chinese bid for a super embassy on the historic Royal Mint site. What of course he really meant, not lost on Xi, was that the Government would notwithstanding opposition from the security services and the council overrule the planning process to give Xi what he wanted. This was project kowtow taken to new levels of obsequiousness.
The reason for this sudden about turn is the desperate state of the economy. When the Chancellor launched her first Budget, she said in unequivocal terms that its purpose was to create economic growth. Of course, as we all know, the opposite has occurred.
The Budget which massively hiked taxes and borrowing, whilst having already caved in to the huge spending demands from the various public sector unions, ensured that business confidence went through the floor. Small wonder the OBR has had to half its growth forecast as growth flat lines and inflation rises. Now as stagflation casts its shadow, a desperate government thrashes around for a way to get growth.
At this point someone dusted off the golden era plan to cosy up to China. Wise heads in Government, preferably who have at some point created businesses in the private sector, could have pointed out that it is from your domestic economy that the vast majority of growth is obtained. Besides, project kowtow was tried once before – and failed.
Sadly no sensible people seem to exist in this Cabinet, a perhaps unsurprising fact given that almost all of them entered politics via a career in the public sector. They have never balanced a book or cut a paycheck; none have risked it all in building a private business. As such, they are easily hoodwinked by the honeyed promises of export-driven growth, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary being true.
Tragically, it isn’t just economics that is at stake. This unseemly crawl to China risks lives at home and abroad. Project kowtow means giving the Chinese a huge embassy near the city and on top of vital communication cables. It means turning a blind eye to those who have fled from China and who reside in the UK but on whom Xi has placed a bounty of $1 million HK. It means doing nothing about illegal Chinese police stations in the UK coercing Chinese dissidents by threatening their families at home. It also means buying solar arrays from China, cheaper than others because knowing they are made with slave labour, as they pursue net zero.
Yet I wonder if anyone in Government has got up from their knees to see what President Xi thinks about Labour’s shifting stance.
President Xi Jinping has made it clear again and again that he “aims to form a ‘counterattack and deterrence’ against other countries by fostering killer technologies and strengthening the global supply chain’s dependence on China.” At least Xi knows the real meaning of kowtow.
