China

In my teens, rubbishing the implacable edifice of the United States felt like kicking a tank in trainers. Richard Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ was patriotic. Railing about my country’s disgraceful historical underbelly — slavery, the Native American genocide — seemed edgy. Fast-forward, and in the West trashing your own country has become a central preoccupation of the ruling class. University administrators, corporate board members and media pundits compete with one another over who can denounce their disgusting society with more fervour. Shame, or what passes for it, is the new ostentation. America’s own President decries his country’s ‘systemic racism’.

It is becoming harder and harder to ignore China’s aggressive behaviour. As I say in the magazine this week, China wants to pick off its opponents. Only a unified western response can stop this, but all too often that has been lacking. New Zealand was strikingly absent from the statement issued by 14 countries When Beijing turned on Australia for suggesting that there should be an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, there was a shocking lack of solidarity from New Zealand. Wellington’s trade minister, while negotiating an upgrade to its trade deal with China, suggested Australia should ‘show respect’ to China. New Zealand now exports almost half its meat and wool to China.

The Prime Minister has called for an international coalition of free countries to oppose the growing influence of China’s authoritarian dictatorship. But it needs to be a lot bolder. The wheels of international diplomacy turn slowly and the government should make full and immediate use of the powers it already has. Three decisive steps are already possible. Companies from Western liberal democracies are bolstering an authoritarian dictatorship First, we should stop entities under the control or influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from buying up our companies, especially infrastructure firms. A Chinese company, for example, controls about 25 per cent of North Sea oil and other companies own gas, water and electricity suppliers in the UK.

In 1991, at the height of the first Gulf War, the EU demonstrated to the world its divisions and helplessness, as Belgium infamously blocked the export of munitions to the UK, then at war in the Gulf. They quickly came to regret it. The Belgian Foreign Minister subsequently remarked tellingly: ‘Europe is an economic giant, a political dwarf and a military worm’. It seems these days that little has changed, save that even the EU’s claim to be an ‘economic giant’ is eroding with the loss of the world’s fifth largest economy, a dwindling share of world trade and a catatonic growth rate, even before the pandemic. Worse still, much of its relative economic decline is self-inflicted.

Does the Chinese Communist Party understand how our parliamentary democracy works? The evidence from the last 24 hours suggests not. Along with some of my Conservative colleagues in the House of Commons – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Loughton, Tom Tugendhat and Neil O’Brien – as well as two peers, a QC and an academic, I have been banned from entering China, had any assets in China frozen (not that I have any there) and have had Chinese citizens and institutions prohibited from doing business with me. All because I have voiced well-evidenced concerns about the persecution of the Uyghur Muslim minority by the Chinese government.

Thoughtful observers of life often comment on the richness of the English language, its huge polyglot vocabulary, its precision, it sinewy expressiveness. It is doubtless politically incorrect to say so, but English has also shown itself to be a conspicuous ally of political liberty. I have commented on this in the past, noting that 'there seems to be some deep connection between the English language and that most uncommon virtue, common sense'. Speakers of English can be plenty extravagant, it may go without saying, but there is something about English — exactly why, I do not know — that acts to tether thought to the empirical world.

The government’s integrated review of foreign and security policy, published yesterday, has landed surprisingly well considering that much of the Whitehall blob has been so dismissive of Boris Johnson’s concept of Global Britain. A few longstanding critics have been snippy about the new document. But no one can disagree that the review offers a genuine strategy. In recent years, one of the most persistent ideas about the UK’s future on the world stage has been that we cannot make a go of things post-Brexit. Such ideas, so the counter-argument goes, are based on the deluded nostalgia of a ‘buccaneering’ nation, foolishly going it alone on trade and much else besides.