Jonathan Mirsky

David Cameron’s craven surrender to China follows a pattern

‘This week I make a visit to China. I come with a clear ambition: to build a lasting friendship that can become a blueprint for future cooperation between our countries. We have a responsibility through our ongoing dialogue to work together on a range of wider international issues – from negotiations with Iran, to counter-terrorism and climate change.’ 

North Korea’s President Kim on the verge of his latest visit to Beijing? It must be. North Korea is China’s only ally in the normal sense of the word. With all other countries, Beijing’s relationship waxes and wanes depending on how ‘friendly’ Beijing deems them to be.

But no, actually. This, lightly edited by me, was David Cameron writing in the Chinese trade magazine Cai Xin, on the eve of this week’s visit to China taking with him one of the largest trade delegations, 120 strong, Britain has ever sent abroad.

Knowing that some spoil sports may carp that he should say something in China about human rights – when Boris Johnson was in Beijing recently he told a BBC interviewer that mentioning freedom, for instance, was a matter for the Foreign Office – Mr Cameron praised China’s top leaders for setting a clear goal: comprehensive reform, including issues such as ‘the judicial protection of human rights…’ This will come as news, if he ever hears these words, to Liu Xiaobo, China’s only-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner, now serving an eleven-year sentence for calling for democracy, his fourth sentence since 1989 for this crime which in Beijing’s eyes threatened ‘stability’ and appeared to call for counter-revolution. There are many other such counter-revolutionaries in China, either behind bars or under house arrest, like the artist Ai Weiwei, one of the designers of the Olympic Birds’ Nest stadium and the creator of the sunflower seed installation some years ago at Tate Modern, and the several dozen members of the New Citizens Movement, who would find Mr Clegg a good leader.

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