By Chris Giles and Geoff Dyer
David Cameron, the British prime minister, on Wednesday will tell China that it would serve its own interests if it opened up to multi-party democracy, a free press and the rule of law, as he attempts to balance concerns for human rights with his trade mission.
In a keynote speech to university students in Beijing, Mr Cameron explains that the constraints he faces in Britain from a political opposition, from the media and from the courts can be frustrating, “but ultimately we believe that they make our government better and our country stronger”.
Free speech helps “the British government to come to sensible decisions and to develop robust policies that command the confidence of our people”, he will say.
Linking these lessons to China, the prime minister will call for “a greater political opening”, telling his hosts that “the best guarantor of prosperity and stability is for economic and political progress to go in step together”.
Neither in his speech nor in his exchanges with Wen Jiabao, Chinese premier, on Tuesday did Mr Cameron raise specific cases, such as Liu Xiaobo, the dissident Nobel peace prize winner, who is imprisoned in China.
By calling for political reform to catch up with economic reforms while avoiding mention of specific cases in public, Mr Cameron will not risk upsetting his Chinese hosts. Indeed, some Chinese leaders have made similar arguments about the importance of political reform.
In a speech he gave in Shenzhen in August, Mr Wen said: “If there is no guarantee of reform of the political system, then results obtained from the reform of the economic system may be lost, and the goal of modernisation cannot be achieved.”
Mr Cameron’s words also echo the approach Barack Obama took when discussing media freedom and political reform with an audience of students in Shanghai last year.
“I should be honest, as president of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticising me all the time,” Mr Obama said. “But … I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”
In line with Mr Cameron’s mission to double of trade with China over the next five years, Rolls-Royce on Tuesday signed a £750m deal with China Eastern Airlines and Britain set a target for a rapid expansion of mandarin teaching
However, the China UK summit has already been faced with diplomatic incidents. Mr Cameron risked a diplomatic spat by wearing a lapel poppy for his meetings on Tuesday. Michael Gove, education secretary, who also attended the ceremony, has recently attacked the Chinese government, calling it a “police state” which “remains fettered by a terrible apparatus of repression”.
Mr Cameron’s failure to raise specific cases in public reflects the difficult balance he is trying to strike between ensuring a successful summit and standing up for human rights. It is expected that he will raise specific cases in private before the end of the summit on Wednesday but Downing Street officials would not confirm that on Tuesday evening.
A leading human rights lawyer whose firm represented Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel peace prize winner, was barred from leaving China on Tuesday. Mo Shaoping said that he was prevented by police from boarding a flight at Beijing airport to go to a legal conference in the UK. He Weifang, a law professor, was also stopped.
Mr Mo said police gave only vague reasons for barring him from leaving and said that he had no plans to go to the Nobel prize ceremony on December 10. Yet the incident comes as dozens of friends of Mr Liu and other dissidents have been put under house arrest or constant police supervision since the announcement of the award last month.
