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March 26, 2021 - 11:55am
Tom Tugendhat MP is Chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and one of the five British MPs placed on a sanctions list yesterday by the Chinese Communist Party. He spoke to Freddie Sayers about what it means.
On the impact of sanctions on him personally
“It doesn’t affect me at all, really, because I have no interests in China, either personal or professional. So for me, it’s not significant. But what this is, is an attempt to intimidate British business people, intimidate British politicians and, by the way, intimidate many other people around the world. This is an attempt to bully and I hope it will be seen for exactly what it is.”
These are Chinese rights, not Western rights
“I think we need to stand up for human rights as set out by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which is not a Western imposition. Those human rights were written by P.C. Chang, a Chinese diplomat. These are Chinese rights that we’re standing up for. And it’s quite something that the Chinese Communist Party is the organisation that is looking to condemn the Chinese citizenry to hardship and its non Chinese powers that are looking to stand up for the Chinese people.”
‘Guarding the guards’ over Covid restrictions
“I know the government got extra powers, which allow it to go until six months time, but it needs to lift them the moment that that is reasonable to do so which I hope, according to the government’s own timelines will be around the 21st of June. So I think that, you know, there is certainly a job of guarding the guards for members of parliament today and powerful speeches by people like Charles Walker yesterday, and and indeed many others on all sides of the house were very important to listen to, but I don’t think it’s quite the same parallel.”
On personal harassment by the Chinese state
“I’ve had letters sent to my home, which is a sort of a ‘we know where you live’ type of message by people in mainland China and friends of mine in agencies have been quite clear as to who they believe has done it. And I’ve had fake email addresses set up in my name and sent out messages to people like you often claiming all sorts of extraordinary and spurious claims… There’s absolutely no doubt that in a tyrannical state like China, these are not the actions of free citizens. These are the actions of the Chinese state. There’s no doubt about it at all. And speaking to internet providers, it’s absolutely clear, who has been doing it, there’s really no doubt at all.”
‘Minor irritation’
“The Chinese state has been doing this to its own people for 50 years — it’s hardly surprising that it’s now doing it to people it considers a nuisance overseas. The reality is that the Chinese government runs an extremely aggressive totalitarian regime with which it seeks to silence dissent. It has some of the largest numbers of people in prison, it has some of the highest capital punishment rates in the world, it executes in prisons in order to achieve its aims. And it intimidates in order to attempt to silence beforehand. And you know, the fact that I’m getting some minor irritation, it shouldn’t be here or there.”
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SubscribeYour party has taken its instruction from academics who hold Chinese authoritarianism in very high regard indeed. Ferguson admits he didn’t think SAGE would ‘get away with’ imitating Chinese authoritarianism, but rejoices along with Johnson and Hancock that they did. Jenny Whatsname the psychologist on the psychological operations team is herself a devout and committed Communist. She has inflicted a programme of humiliating mass testing on children in schools.
The Govt. has been licking China’s backside for years, academics have been bought and paid for by the CCP. The general public are made to swallow all kinds of green rubbish that will impoverish us and make the frail and
elderly die of hypothermia, while China
goes on building coal power stations. Yet the only aspect of China’s authoritarianism that the Govt. gets all up in arms about, is the treatment of its Muslim population. In this country British girls and children have been subjected to rape, torture and prostitution by Muslim men and it has been ignored because the state, for the last thirty years at least, has adopted Communist ideology and believes the majority of its own population, the white working class are second class citizens. It has allowed influx after influx of Muslms into the country, not content with raping and blowing us to pieces or committing other terrorist atrocities, some of these are now coming to power bringing their own brand of Islamic authoritarianism with them. The ‘ you Kahn do this and the Khan do that’ brigade, who have introduced their own forms of authoritarian tyranny, the new Hate Crime laws in Scotland Sadiqs Sharia lite garbage in London and todays events at Batley GrammarSchool.
So sorry Tom, you belong to a party that hates its own people, sucks up to Communist dictators and Islamic extremists. I can’t get too worked up about the Chinese sending you nasty letters.
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Great response! Couldn‘t have said it better
Brilliant, totally agree.
You do know it’s just a matter of time before the Chinese start buying up many of our people in positions of authority, with various types of bonbons, right? It’s just the old combination – human nature and powerful nation politics.
And I’m willing to bet, another old pattern will start to play out all over again: those on the left, will be bought out with money. And those on the right, with honey.
They’ve been at it in the universities for years.
The Democrat Congressman Swalwell appears to have been bought with both money and honey by the Chinese. And still the Dems have not made him stand down from the Joint Intelligence Committee or whatever it’s called.
But yes, you are right, they will soon start buying up our lot, just as they bought the Biden’s and numerous other US politicians.
Where is your evidence fir the claim the Chinese “bought” Biden?
They have bought all sorts of people in the UK and have been doing so for years. Just as the EU bought people out with nice over-paid jobs, sinecures and grants – and made it so difficult for us to leave.
Unfortunately Democracies no matter how fragile cannot understand this is no sudden 5 year short lived plan, this has been in development since Mao’s 1949 speech “the Chinese people have stood up”. Through to this January’s President Xi’s comments to the Chinese Communist Armed Forces “Prepare for war”. there has been a central communist theme of making China undefeatable and taking back ALL lands, such as Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan (Formosa). Worse they are expanding into the South China Seas claiming vast mineral rights.
In the 1960’s the little red book was waived aggressively from its Embassies, “papers spoke of Reds under the beds”.
Now we have open agression in Nepal and India. Myanmar has Chinese Communist party sponsored brutality and murder. These are not coincidences. From Vietnam to the Philippines, The Chinese are aggressively claiming territorial rights.
Their belt and roads policies subborn governments and tie them to the Chinese will. Soon they will exploit their control of rivers feeding into South East Asia, they have built massive dam projects to control the flow of lifelines like the Mekong River. Meanwhile we have distractions and worry about Carbon emissions, China, India and Russia build coal fired power stations at one a week… Strangely activists don’t protest in these countries.
A badge of honour.
What can be done to protect the more vulnerable (Brits with relations in China for example)?
Nothing.
All a bit silly, really. EU and UK sanction individuals in China to make it look as though EU and UK are doing something and China retaliates to make it look like China is doing something. Tugenhadt gets more airtime so he’s happy. And none of it helps the Uighurs.
Harshly criticizing China when at the same time both UK and Europe turn a blind eye to Turkey’s human rights violations it’s nothing less than hypocrisy Mr.Tugendhat.
We are anticipating the sanctions on Turkey and then maybe you can convince us about your country’s honest intentions.
I think Islam, in general and Turkey, in particular are a more immediate threat to the West than China. The fact that far fewer individuals, at all levels, are willing to criticise Islam than they are to criticise China, proves that.
The outcome of events at Batley Grammar School should make us all sit up and take notice.
Tugendhat is doing the right thing by speaking out, but at the same time, he has to make a bigger effort to understand China better: culture, history, etc. He may say that it’s irrelevant to understand China better, because a crime is a crime. But I say that our common future on this planet is based on a common and universal understanding. So it’s not irrelevant.
I had an unsettling event, likely involving China. For a good wile I was very vocal at telling my thinking on China on line. China has a big program where they track every human on Earth, likely give them a score, maybe a million Chinese work at some capacity in cataloguing the world’s people, as they do their own. I think it serves a multi function, one is the jobs program for educated people, and then it is to devolope the skills and technology and database, and also they just have a mania for voyeurism where tracking everything on everyone is a compulsion, and then having the dirt on everyone, and the weakness, strength, and so on helps in manipulating the world. Every African tracked on social media, education, job, and so on is very useful at Economically-colonizing that land. And so on. They have a score on you.
Anyway, a lot of people also do not like me online, so it may have been someone else, but….I came home one day and a black SUV was waiting for me, it was Homeland security. A very illegal component which makes some pistols fully automatic was intercepted at JFK being sent from China to my address and name. The end was I ‘Abandoned it to Homeland Security’ on a form, so they could keep it, them not having to deliver it to me and arrest me. But you know Homeland does not call unless it is a big deal. Now I had a small history with them before, Not sure which way they think of me totally, but they do know me. Later I did ask an agent what I should think of all this, he said not to worry, to them is was over. Pretty weird. But then lots of odd things have happened with me over the years, and one does wonder if it is coincidence or Synchronicity or justifiable paranoia. (My computer crashed wile watching the above video, I forced a re-boot on the modem and it continued. just noise in the system, but then,,)
I recall listening to an interview where Mr Tugendhat was criticising Russia, got rather over-excited and started making claims of extremely limited veracity, which went unchallenged by the BBC interviewer – an experienced journalist who should have known better.
It makes it very difficult for me to believe Mr Tugendhat now.
I wonder what assets they froze in China of his? UK is selling its self one piece at a time to adversarial nations. China building Nuclear Power in UK, Hauwei G5 still wafting about, you can read endless stuff like
“China has threatened to remove its support of new nuclear power plants in the UK after Boris Johnson approved plans last week to develop 5G network alternatives to Huawei. According to the Sunday Times , in a recent briefing, Liu Xiaoming – China’s ambassador to the UK – said the Huawei decision is “a litmus test of whether Britain is a true and faithful partner of China“.” (newcivilengeer . com)
Need to ask this guy whether Britain is a true and faithful partner of China, we all want to know.
China is not alone in this, Iran, Saudi, Bahrain, Burma (my dad fought there to free it from tyranny, ironic really), North Korea, Oman, UAE, most African countries ( I know they get votes but that means nothing), Turkmenistan, the list is endless and OH I forgot Russia as bad as China, as Putin will be in power until he dies as he keeps jailing/killing opponents and the Russians in their permanent state of Vodka induced haze love it. Having worked with Russians I can honestly say there are very few I found acceptable. Bullying is their weapon of choice.
Too one-sided as with so many interviews on UnHerd. Pity. Even in the form of statements from pro China spokesmen, possibly the PRC ambassador (not least on the allegations levelled at him personally) would have been helpful. It cannot be beyond the wit of Unherd to put counterarguments to interviewees to generate some semblance of balance. To suggest that the CCP had little to do with lifting 850 million Chinese out of poverty is risible! I’m no apologist for the CCP (quite the opposite) but balance is surely a western virtue so why optvfor a CCP-style, one-sided progandist appriach? Must do better!
I agree that a statement or even an interview with a Chinese official on this matter would be interesting. But be prepared that their comments are most of the time full of stereotype language. To me (but who am I to say) it sounds like they are quoting from a standard repertoire of principles. At times it is so alienating to read or listen to that I don’t really understand what they are trying to say. It doesn’t feel like someone telling what he thinks himself. But such a conversation really is worth a try, if you can get hold of someone who is prepared to do so without a script in advance.
Am I alone in thinking that picture makes Tom T look like Colin Firth’s slightly nerdy brother?