We need to rebuild relations with China – Bill Carmichael

At the time our country was ruled by a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition and Clegg, as leader of the Lib Dems, was the Deputy Prime Minister.

What had angered students and other activists was that Clegg had promised faithfully, during the 2010 election campaign, to oppose any increase in student tuition fees and to scrap them altogether.

But once in power alongside their Conservative allies, the Lib Dems 
had promptly abandoned that solemn pledge.

It was a disastrous U-turn for the party and marked the beginning of the end of Clegg’s political career – although he appears to have done quite well for himself since, becoming a well-paid spin doctor for Facebook.

The Lib Dems have never fully recovered to this day.

But among my group of student journalists were a couple of Chinese nationals and they were genuinely shocked and appalled by what they had witnessed.

I remember one saying to the effect: “The crowd were shouting very rude things. Surely you can’t say those things about the Deputy Prime Minister. Won’t they go to jail?”

I reassured her that the protesters would not go to jail and what they saw, although possibly ugly and unruly, was actually a healthy sign of a functioning democratic society.

I still think that today. Thank God we live in a country where you can shout rude things about senior politicians without facing unpleasant consequences – although the way the woke cultural revolution, and the intolerant cult of cancel culture, is going, I don’t think we can take any of our liberties for granted.

The point of this anecdote is to illustrate the intense contrast between China and the West. In terms of history, politics, culture, legal systems, the media and pretty much everything else we couldn’t be more different while remaining on the same planet.

And I believe that these differences help to explain the deteriorating relationship between the West and China and increasing antagonism over the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the power struggle in Hong Kong and the Huawei 5G ban.

At the risk of generalisation, but after years of close observation, I would say that Chinese people tend to be intensely patriotic and proud – rightly in my view – of their long history and rich culture.

Many value collective attributes such as stability and security, sometimes at the expense of individual qualities such as personal freedom, more highly than often found in the West. It is common in China to put the needs of society ahead of your own.

And then comes the concept of “Mianzi”, a notoriously difficult notion for Westerners to grasp, involving a cultural understanding of respect, honour and social standing and often translated into English as “face”.

To illustrate, I once worked with a young Chinese journalist who had uncovered what appeared to be a clear case of corruption involving the misuse of building permits in her home city.

I thought it a fantastic story with a clear public interest in publishing. But she was reluctant to write it because of the sense of collective shame – or loss of face – it would bring to her community. She never published the story.

I think I can detect the same misunderstandings and confusion played out on the international stage today. Perhaps one reason the Chinese were initially tardy in sharing details of the Covid-19 outbreak was the collective shame – or loss of face – about the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan.

In Hong Kong we can see an uncomprehending clash between the desire for individual freedom and the need for collective security.

With the Huawei controversy we see a country stung by the collective shame – or loss of face – of its major technology company being rejected in the West.

I know from my many Chinese anglophile friends that current disputes between our two countries, and the deteriorating relationship, brings them great pain, as it does me.

I hope this is a temporary blip and things will soon improve, with a mutual attempt at understanding our differences leading to a firm and lasting friendship.

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