TO UNDERSTAND China means to “see the country in its own terms and because it sees itself relatively than simply through Western lenses”, the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Philip Mounstephen, said within the House of Lords’ final debate of 2024, on “China: Human rights and security”.
Human rights and freedom of faith or belief were among the many chief concerns because the House considered Britain’s future relations with China amid questions over China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims.
Referring to the traditional Chinese “concept of tianxia, a word which means ‘all under heaven’ — describing a system of relations across Asia, with China because the centre of the civilised world and the apex of culture”, Bishop Mountstephen said that his concept had languished, “only to reassert itself now under President Xi, just as neo-Tsarism has in Russia. . .
“It manifests itself in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong, within the South China Sea, in aggression towards Taiwan, in transnational repression, and in malign influence corresponding to we now have seen here in recent days. It is seen specifically in violations of faith or belief. Religious minorities — Muslims in Xinjiang, Buddhists in Tibet, Falun Gong and Christians across China — have to be repressed, because they don’t accept that ultimate authority rests with the one at the guts of the system, as tianxia dictates.”
Bishop Mounstephen chaired the Independent Review of Christian Persecution, commissioned in 2018 by the Foreign Office (News, 26 December 2018). Resuming the theme on this debate, he said that “a religiously illiterate approach that relies on Western secular assumptions simply won’t do, and we cannot counter a three-millennia-old concept by appeal to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was drawn up only in 1948, deeply as I think in it. . . We must take a religiously informed approach to such an idea.”
He welcomed the brand new special envoy for freedom of faith or belief, David Smith MP (News, 17 December 2024), and hoped that “his office will likely be properly resourced, each financially and with staff, in order that he could make the fullest impact possible in his role”. He was clear that “only a sturdy approach to China will do.”
Following him, Lord Ahmad said that “there was much in his reflections; he was things from having a lens on a rustic he knows.”
Speaking as “the grandson of former medical missionaries in south-west China”, the Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, explained his personal interest in the talk. He wished specifically “to spotlight the desperate situation of Uyghur Muslims within the north-western region of Xinjiang . . . declared as being subject to genocide”, and urged the Government “to be sure that the screening of products made in forced labour camps — every thing from solar panels to tomatoes — prevents them being imported into this country”.
He continued: “The challenges faced by Uyghur Muslims are actually well-documented. They are herded into so-called vocational skills, education, and training centres, surrounded by guards who operate a shoot-to-kill policy on those that would try to flee. Subjected to mass indoctrination, forced labour, and coercive sterilisation, it is difficult to assume a more egregious example of recent slavery on the earth today. It was hugely encouraging that the Labour Party, in opposition, gave such an unwavering commitment to the decision to designate these atrocities as genocide, pure and straightforward — or, as we’d say, impure and straightforward.”
On the evils of recent slavery, and noting the import of products at British airports from Xinjiang province, “an area declared to be the topic of an ongoing genocide”, Bishop Watson hoped that the UK would stop becoming “the dumping ground for goods produced in such horrendous circumstances”.
Speaking for the Government, Baroness Chapman shared the concerns on human rights. “Across China, people face restrictions and violations of human rights and other fundamental freedoms,” she said. She echoed Bishop Watson’s words: “In Xinjiang, China continues to persecute and arbitrarily detain Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities.”
In his concluding speech, Lord Alton said that “no one suffers more by the hands of the Chinese Communist Party than the Chinese people themselves”; it was crucial, he said, to maintain “engaging on things corresponding to zero emissions. . . One third of all emissions come out of China, which has never kept to any of the targets — just because it didn’t keep to the guarantees made 40 years ago today within the Sino-British accord.
“Britain has a proud tradition of standing as much as tyranny. I hope that we’ll proceed to try this . . . The eyes of the world are on this British Parliament, that we speak out when others are silent, and that notice will likely be taken of the eloquent speeches which were made here today.”
