How China poses a real and existential threat to Scotland's way of life

China makes no secret of its geostrategic ambitions. In a recent visit to Moscow, days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping stood at the door of the Kremlin with his “dear friend” and shared an observation with him in front of the global media. “Right now there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” he said. “And we are the ones driving these changes together.”

Beijing has shown itself willing to employ any number of coercive tools to secure China’s place at the centre of what it sees as a newly emerging international order. From the brutal repression of pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong to the attempted economic strangulation of Lithuania after a “Taiwan Representative Office” was opened in Vilnius, Beijing’s heavy hand has already been felt across the democratic world.

I saw this first hand this week in Taiwan at the annual conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. I was a co-founder of IPAC, along with parliamentarians from all parties and none from across the UK and wider democratic world. Now, as a former MP, I am pleased to have been asked to join others such as my friends, the former Conservative MP Tim Loughton and former German Green MEP, Reinhard Bütikofer, and continue to shape IPAC’s work as it grapples with the China challenge.

Truly global in nature, IPAC is a forum for free and open debate about Beijing’s geostrategic goals and the world order that President Xi seeks to build. It leaves partisan politics at the door, and brings together legislators, civil society activists, eminent lawyers, journalists and academics from 25 countries for informed debate about how we answer the China challenge across all spheres: economy, technology, democracy and much more. There can be nothing that the Chinese government wants less.

‘One China principle’

Prior to attending, several politicians – none of them from the United Kingdom – were contacted by their local Chinese embassy and urged not to attend. In one egregious case, one elected MP from the Solomon Islands. Peter Keniloria Jr, was denounced by his own government for having the courage to attend. In a statement published after the conference, using language almost identical to that used by Chinese state-affiliated media, the government of the Solomon Islands stated that the parliamentarian’s attendance at the conference “violates the one China principle”.

The statement went on to restate the Solomon Islands’ desire to stay close to their largest trading partner and, as if reciting a catechism, dutifully closed with the words that “the Solomon Islands respects the People’s Republic of China’s sovereignty and maintains its respect for the one China principle and that Taiwan is an integral part of the People’s Republic of China”.

Small countries across the world, from Lithuania to the Solomon Islands, have learnt the hard way that China is neither their friend nor a reliable trading partner. It is a government which uses its immense economic might as a tool to keep smaller countries in check and which has shown itself only too willing to turn the screws as soon as the slightest opposition to Beijing is voiced. This is not the behaviour of a government that we should be deepening ties with.

Misguided hopes

And yet this seems to be exactly what is happening. Too much of Scotland’s economy is intertwined with a government whose stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values. Instead of following our European allies and ‘derisking’ our economy, the Scottish Government seems more than happy to wear a golden blindfold. It will end badly.

Successive governments have badly misunderstood modern China. Following the handover of Hong Kong, Robin Cook predicted that the city “will become a bridge to a new relationship between Britain and China which is stronger and more constructive than we have enjoyed up to now”. This new relationship, the then Foreign Secretary suggested, “would enable Britain and China to hold a constructive dialogue on international security, on global issues such as the environment and on universal standards of human rights”. Twenty-six years on, the atrocities in Xinjiang, the sanctioning of UK MPs, and the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai, make Cook’s words seem like a distant – and perhaps naive – fantasy.

Golden Era mistakes

Scotland’s politicians need to start taking this more seriously. President Xi seeks to shape the world in the CCP’s image: a place where security and the economy take precedence over political and civil rights, where citizens serve the state, and where the state serves itself.

The threat to our way of life is real and existential. It deserves serious thought. Indeed, the conference in Taipei cemented my view that we need to urgently establish a cross-party commission, bringing together experts and politicians from both parliaments to consider our relationship with China, and audit the areas of risk in our economy and public institutions where overreliance presents a strategic national threat.

Politicians who understand the seriousness, such as the Liberal Democrat, Alex Cole-Hamilton, Labour’s Blair McDougall and the Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, would have much to contribute. Baroness Helena Kennedy, a fellow member of IPAC, would also add considerable substance to such a body. With that said, isolation is not the answer. Cultural engagement and trade benefits us as much as it does China, while common challenges – like climate change and AI – will only be solved through collaboration. But neither is continued engagement on the same terms as David Cameron’s Golden Era and Angela Merkel’s Wandel durch Handel, which have been shown to have hopelessly misread China and its leaders. 

Scotland needs to engage with China as it is today – not as we wish it would be, or how it was years ago. In a 2015 speech to his party, President Xi said “the most important thing is that we proceed always from objective reality rather than subjective desire”.  The Scottish Government should take note.