The Foreign Office must defend Dame Caroline Wilson, our woman in Beijing
Caroline Wilson (gov.uk)
Dame Caroline Wilson, the British Ambassador in Beijing, has been summoned to the Chinese Foreign Ministry for defending the role of a free press. The article, entitled “Do foreign media hate China?”, was posted on WeChat, the state-controlled Chinese version of WhatsApp, but last week users were prevented from sharing it by the non-encrypted platform. The ban was evidently deemed insufficient punishment and Beijing has now escalated a row about an article into a full-blown diplomatic incident.
On Tuesday a statement was issued by the Ministry denouncing Dame Caroline for spreading “fake news”, accusing her of “arrogance” and “bias”, claiming that “this act is severely out of line of her diplomatic role”. It demanded that “Ms Wilson deeply reflects on her own duties” and “positions herself correctly”. This sounds like a threat to declare the Ambassador persona non grata, thereby withdrawing her diplomatic status.
Dame Caroline has refused to be intimidated by this bullying. She responded to the dressing down she had received by reposting the offending piece, including a link to the Chinese text, and tweeting: “I stand by my article. No doubt the outgoing Chinese Ambassador to the UK stands by the 170+ pieces he was able to place in the mainstream British media.”
It is easy to underestimate the significance of diplomacy for repressive regimes such as China. In the West, such disputes are downplayed or ignored in the media. At the time of writing, the BBC had not even reported Beijing’s sanctions against the British Ambassador. In so far as we do notice such rows, we find it hard not to smile at the overblown prose style of the (no doubt expensively educated) Chinese officials: “The article is full of the arrogance of being the master and ideological bias. It confuses the white with the black, [and] manipulates double standards.”
Yet for Beijing, such aggressive “wolf diplomacy” has become a routine weapon in its unrelenting attempt to silence criticism at home as well as abroad. This attempt to humiliate the Ambassador is a deliberate propaganda coup for domestic consumption, intended to demonstrate the power of the People’s Republic. The British are a favourite target, mainly on account of our unique relationship with Hong Kong and our colonial history. But the present incident is about the freedom of the press and the stakes are high for the West as well as for China. When Ofcom deprived a Chinese state television station of its licence to broadcast in the UK, Beijing seized the opportunity to retaliate against the BBC. China’s main European communications hub is based in Chiswick and the new Chinese Embassy that is due to be built on the site of the Royal Mint in the City of London will be one of the largest in the world. Significantly, Beijing’s new mission, if it is given planning permission, will be bigger than the new US Embassy. Its primary role appears to be intelligence-gathering, in particular on Chinese nationals in Britain, including tens of thousands of new émigrés from Hong Kong. The fortress-like building, complete with bunkers and surveillance equipment, will bolster Beijing’s influence on British business, universities and other institutions. And it will, of course, provide a base for espionage.
The West’s greatest asset in dealing with China is the truth. However hard it tries, the Chinese Communist Party cannot suppress its crimes against humanity, especially against the Uighur minority. This week, the full extent of the horror in Xinjiang has been highlighted by a report from the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a respected US think tank. This exhaustive investigation by over 50 international legal experts, running to 25,000 pages of evidence, comes to the damning conclusion that the Chinese Government is guilty of genocide under all five articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which China is a signatory.
“The intent to destroy the Uighurs as a group is derived from objective proof, consisting of comprehensive state policy and practice, which Xi Jinping, the highest authority in China, set in motion,” the report concludes. At the 1,400 internment camps in which some two million Uighurs are held, untold numbers of inmates are believed to have been killed, tortured, sexually abused and sterilised. Brainwashing, forced labour and the removal of children from their families are routine. These genocidal camps are crime scenes and, under international law, cannot be ignored by signatories to the Convention, Britain included. The point of having an agreed definition of genocide is not only to deter perpetrators but also bystanders who are tempted to turn a blind eye.
What this boils down to is that Xi Jinping and his regime ought to be ostracised and ultimately held accountable for their crimes. Their victims, of whom the Uighurs are only the most prominent, cry out for justice. Without a free press, they have no hope of redress. That is why Dame Caroline Wilson was right to defend the freedom to report and comment on Chinese internal affairs. And that is why it is vital that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office should back her up. If this means that she has to leave Beijing, so be it. The Chinese Government knows that it has at least as much to lose from a mutual downgrading of diplomatic relations with the UK. Where China is concerned, Britain — as the founder and champion of the free press —cannot be economical with the truth.
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