Financial Times, 28 June 2016

By Yuan Yang – A scathing report on China’s human rights record by members of Britain’s governing Conservative party has taken aim at a relationship that party leaders have hailed as a “golden era” for both countries.

The open dissent on the pro-China policy pursued by George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, comes as the Conservatives are being riven by the results of last week’s vote to take Britain out of the EU.

“It cannot be in Britain’s interest, or that of the wider world, to witness a lack of respect for human rights or the rule of law by any country with whom we seek to have a meaningful relationship, without challenging this when we become aware of it,” says the report. “In the relationship between the United Kingdom and China, we must make it clear that we are on the side of the people of China.”

The party’s human rights commission interviewed a number of witnesses who said that the situation in China had deteriorated between 2013 and 2016 as Xi Jinping, Chinese president, tried to consolidate power. The period has seen the detention of hundreds of lawyers, tighter control of the mainland media, protests in Hong Kong and the detention in China of several Hong Kong booksellers in connection with titles sold in their store.

“This report could not have come at a worse time,” said Xie Tao, a politics professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “China currently feels sympathetic for the UK in the wake of Brexit; this could turn public opinion against [Britain].”

China’s ruling Communist party often views foreign criticism of its human rights record as an attempt to weaken and divide the country. But the committee heard that international pressure had been effective in securing the release of some individuals and highlighting media and internet censorship.

The report is a departure for the Conservative party, which has sought to secure a “special relationship” with China and attract Chinese investment into the UK. Mr Osborne is particularly keen to attract Chinese direct investment into the north of England.

Last year he visited the ethnically tense Xinjiang region near the Central Asian Border to promote investment in Britain, arriving exactly a year after the region’s most prominent academic was jailed for life for separatism.

The Conservative commission urged the UK government to “raise human rights concerns at every appropriate opportunity”, saying it should do so “publicly as well as in private”.

The government should “commit to meeting regularly with prominent human rights activists, including the Dalai Lama”, it added — a recommendation certain to draw Chinese condemnation.

Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby

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