The Foreign Office's annual human rights report comes out today. It includes material on China, where we have a number of concerns. We raise these regularly with the Chinese Government, at high level. We have both bilateral and EU dialogues on human rights. It is important that these work well.
Chinese leaders say that they want to see improvements in human rights. They also point out that social and economic rights have improved a great deal over the last thirty years. That is true - and China has lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter time than any other country in history. But it is also not the whole story. On civil and political rights, progress has been slow. A timetable for ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China signed in 1998 , would be welcomed round the world.
We point this out not because we do not want China to succeed, or because we want to use this as a card to play in diplomacy, or a tool to keep China down. It's the opposite. We have an increasingly large stake in China's success. And as China changes so rapidly, it - and the relationship with us - matter more to people in the UK, not less. Better human rights contribute to long term stability. Universal values are not a Western invention, but something we are all signed up to through our membership of the UN.
Posted at 16:51 26 March 2009 by Peter Wilson | Comments[2]
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I went to a seminar on the death penalty this morning, that senior Chinese judges and lawyers have organised with the Great Britain China Centre and international experts, and which we and the European Commission are co-sponsoring. Because of the EU's opposition to the death penalty, the Commission and Member States support activity like this in those countries where the death penalty is still used. In practice that number, thankfully, is getting smaller all the time - though China is not alone, and this of course is a legitimate, serious global debate.
The debate inside China on the death penalty is a reasonably open one. But it is hard to get a handle on, because the figures for executions are not public. Estimates for the overall figure vary, but there is a general consensus that the number of executions in China has at least halved since the 1990s. Important reforms were introduced at the beginning of 2007, that the Supreme People's Court must review each sentence when lower courts seek to have it immediately applied. (Some death sentences are suspended for two years: in practice if the prisoner behaves well, my understanding is that these cases are usually commuted to life.) The result has been that an estimated 15% of cases have gone back to the High Courts. Courts are also more likely to think twice before passing a death sentence, now that they are automatically referred to the Supreme People's Court.
Several senior Chinese experts reiterated the publicly stated long term aim to abolish the death penalty. One talked about China's signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): China would need to seriously restrict the application of the death penalty, and ideally consider abolition, in order to ratify the Convention, which, having signed, it clearly wanted to do. As part of the long term project of which this seminar was a part, research has been done into public opinion on the death penalty in China. Although 60% say they are in favour, a large number don't know what they think, and when asked about applying this penalty in particular cases, about 80% oppose it, except in cases of murder. The list of cases to which the death penalty still technically applies in China is a long one, although the scope is narrowing.
There are strong practical reasons for opposing the death penalty. In most cases, the real deterrent for a crime is the likelihood of getting caught more than the severity of the punishment. When the death penalty is applied, subsequent discovery of the wrongful conviction is irreversible. And it is hard to use the ultimate penalty as a deterrent when it is not clear to how many individuals it has actually been applied.
Our disagreement on this subject is not just with China - it is, very publicly, with some other countries too. These days, experts can meet, and talk about what all do agree is a common aim - abolition. The seminar continues today.
Posted at 13:22 31 October 2008 by Peter Wilson | Comments[3]
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We had a big meeting of the China network's top management on Friday, to review progress on our China strategy, and agree on future work. I thought you might be interested by the highlights, because it shows the scale of what we are doing across China, and how much it matters to us. There are three pillars to our strategy. The first is to get the best for the UK from China's rise. Some highlights. In education, we are now issuing more student visas than ever before (see my last blog). In science co-operation, we are on track for almost 12,000 joint research papers between British and Chinese scientists between 2006 and 2010 - we have more substantive co-operation in this area than any other country in Europe. We are making progress on migration - both legal, with the introduction of a points based system a bit like Australia's, plus by allowing students to stay and work in the UK for two years after gradulation, and in combatting illegal migration, where we, wiht the help and support of the Chinese authorities, are now sending many more people back. Our exports to China are up 40% this year, in particular in the automotive, power generation, and retail sectors. And we are now seeing higher numbers of Chinese companies investing in the UK - we were the biggest source of Chinese investment in the EU in 2007. This is good news for the UK. We worked closely on the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, and successfully located over five hundred British citizens registered as missing. China and the UK both had a good Olympics, and we will be working together on 2012 (a big group from the Beijing Organising Committee is coming across to London to share expertise, next month). The UK and the companies and regions involved have great plans for our unique pavilion at Shanghai EXPO in 2010, based round the theme "better city, better life". We are doing more, and plan to do still more, in China's secondary cities, which are growing fast, and offer great opportunities. The second pillar is to work with China on issues where we both have a global responsibility to act. We are doing a lot together on climate change, and we have dramatically expanded our climate change network in China in the last six months. China is doing a lot domestically - the only developing economy with really tough energy efficiency and afforestation targets, that it is now coming closer to meeting. But there is much still to do, including on carbon capture and storage power stations (China is building between one and two power stations a week), and the idea that China look at low carbon development zones which would benefit us all. We are pursuing a number of initiatives that were kick started by a unique meeting in April, when our Ambassadors to other P5 countries, the UN and the EU all came to Beijing for high level discussions on key issues, including proliferation, the millennium development goals, and China/European issues. We see reform of the international financial institutions in a similar way. We are co-operating on what China calls 'hotspot issues', week by week, in particular on Iran, Sudan, and Burma, tho' on all three there is much, much more to be done. The third pillar is working together on sustainable development, modernisation and reform. We have extensive co-operation on sustainable development, backed up by a powerful contribution from Alistair Darling's China Task Force in the UK. We now have a strong political dialogue between our countries, at a number of levels (I blogged recently about our Leadership of the Future Forum, which is just one of them). We have a human rights dialogue, which is critically important. Progress in this area is slower than in so many other areas of Chinese life, and on some issues we profoundly disagree. But that makes conversation between us important, and should not mask the areas where there is movement - for example, China's death penalty reforms, which have reduced the number of crimes to which it applies, and given the Supreme Court the obligation to review all sentences. We hope that the media freedoms introduced for the Olympics are extended. China's stability is an important interest for the rest of the world. Continued reform is vital to that. The Consul Generals from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, and the head of the Far Eastern Department in London, all came over for this meeting. We are a big network now - over seven hundred people, from sixteen different government departments. China's a good place to work if you are a British diplomat, too - four different centres to work in, covering the issues that most matter to us, careers at all levels, and we are expanding. So my advice to my younger Foreign Office (and other civil service) colleagues, and those thinking about joining, is - learn Chinese, while your brain is young enough to get it in, or if you are not good at languages, or are a bit older and have a particular expertise, come to China anyway (we don't run an exclusive club) - this really is a good place to work. James, thank you very much for your kind comment, and the link to your blog. It is great both you and John are doing this! I'd like to come over and see you and the rest of your group, and learn more about what you are seeing in China, if you are up for that.
Posted at 08:16 13 October 2008 by Peter Wilson | Comments[1]
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