Sam McBride: Mammon and morality are uneasy bedfellows, as Northern Ireland’s relationship with China’s authoritarian rulers shows

This week it emerged that the Chinese consulate in Belfast – established at the request of the Executive – was claiming that Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill had told it that they “understand and respect” China’s imposition of a wildly draconian national security law on Hong Kong.

Despite the fact that The Irish News – which broke the story on Tuesday – had asked Stormont Castle if they accepted the claim was accurate, and that the paper did so on the same day that the Hong Kong law was making global headlines because almost 200 police had stormed a newsroom to arrest the owner of a newspaper, the first and deputy first ministers did not appear to grasp the significance of the issue and offered no denial.

But after the story was reported, and as criticism rained down on them, Ms O’Neill and Mrs Foster found convoluted words to distance themselves from what the consulate had said and then their department said that the report had been inaccurate.

But when the News Letter asked the two leaders if they could clearly condemn the harsh Hong Kong law or the Chinese government’s appalling treatment of the Uighur Muslim population and the persecution of other minorities such as Christians, there was silence.

Ultimately, the consulate amended its report to remove the claim – but with no explanation as to what had gone on.

As that story broke on Tuesday, China’s Belfast consulate was featured in The Times for another reason. The paper’s legal editor reported how the consulate was claiming diplomatic immunity to enable it to build ‘the great wall of Belfast’ around its building – despite that being in clear contravention of planning law. The Times noted that the High Court had rejected an injunction application from Belfast City Council on the grounds that diplomatic immunity effectively allowed the consulate to do almost as it liked while remaining immune from legal action.

Both incidents highlight a problem which has been festering for almost a decade since Stormont began strategically attempting to impress the Chinese government.

In common with many countries, Stormont’s leaders were persuaded to court China for one overwhelming reason: Its growing wealth.

With Northern Ireland slow to emerge from the global recession, civil servants, politicians and senior business figures saw that even securing a tiny slice of China’s multiplying prosperity could be transformative to a small region like Northern Ireland.

But there were always going to be awkward strings attached to getting close to authoritarian rulers who lock up their internal critics, persecute religious minorities, censor the internet and have scant respect for free speech.

Whereas in 2010 Peter Robinson was meeting Chinese Christian leaders and referring bluntly to “the persecution suffered by those who are barred from practising their faith by the ruling communist regime”, two years later he and other Stormont ministers were respectfully referring to “the Chinese government” and past criticisms had become muted.

Where in the past the Dalai Lama had been welcomed to Stormont with open arms, now the first and deputy first ministers could not find time to meet him when he was in Northern Ireland.

In fact, a source with knowledge of events eight years ago said that the breakthrough in the relationship – the powerful Madam Liu Yandong’s visit to Belfast in 2012 – had been a direct reward for Stormont’s decision not to meet the Dali Lama.

An individual present on one of several ministerial visits to China that Martin McGuinness did in passing bring up “in an awkward and almost apologetic way” an elliptical reference to China’s appalling human rights abuses – but in a way which appeared to be designed to allow Sinn Féin to say at home that they had done so, rather than as a meaningful attempt to impress his views on senior Communist Party figures.

Five years ago the executive approved a ‘China Strategy’ – a demonstration of the unusual effort the devolved administration was focussing on the country.

Jonathan Bell, first as a junior minister and then as Enterprise Minister, became avidly enthusiastic about promoting links with China. The former DUP minister seemed to be incessantly flying to China where he appeared to develop high-level connections.

Both he and Mr Robinson received honorary professorships from a Chinese university and Mr Bell was given more than £1,000 as a gift from China’s vice-president, something he donated to one of the few aspects of the China-Northern Ireland relationship which was not explicitly about cash, the Confucius Institute at Ulster University which works to strengthen ties with China and to promote Chinese language and culture.

A decade ago, the Confucius Institute was described by the then senior Chinese propagandist and Politburo member Li Changchun as “part of China’s foreign propaganda strategy” but ministers embraced it uncritically.

In a submission to the first and deputy first minister ahead of their trip to China in 2016, senior official Tim Losty – who since 2014 had been Stormont’s man in Beijing – told them that the purpose of the visit was “to create a relationship with the Chinese government that will assist in enhanced trade, increased investment, increasing the number of Chinese students in NI, creating access to research programmes and funding, enhancing NI’s national brand reputation and contributing to global issues”.
Sections of the submission were blacked out when released to this newspaper, but in more than 100 pages of legible text there was no evidence of Stormont even considering the potential trade-off it was making – essentially silence on human rights abuses in exchange for material benefits.

Politicians and civil servants will argue that as a devolved administration without responsibility for foreign policy, such matters are beyond their ambit, and that China would take no regard of their views anyway.

But that is a deeply imperfect answer. Council chambers and the assembly spend hours debating international relations – whether Israel, foreign wars or US actions – far beyond their responsibilities.

And our politicians once did condemn the Chinese government, recognising that to do so was fundamentally different to condemning the people of a proud civilisation which over thousands of years has given the world cultural and creative wealth.

Northern Ireland is now facing a recession perhaps more terrible than anything ever seen in the modern era and there is a utilitarian argument that queasiness about Uighur Muslims being forcibly sterilised and taken to concentration camps, or individuals being arrested in Hong Kong for carrying quotes from the Bible, should be set aside and our leaders should simply focus on doing what they can for the people of Northern Ireland.

But if that is Stormont’s strategy, should it not face up to what it is doing? Mammon and morality are uneasy bedfellows.

This week showed the dangers into which our leaders are stumbling because even when judged on purely pragmatic grounds, perceived subservience to China could be damaging in other regions.

The furore over the Mrs Foster and Ms O’Neill’s alleged comments was widely reported in Hong Kong, a major financial centre, and will also have been fed back to Washington, a big investor now increasingly at variance with Beijing.

With a pandemic raging and Brexit looming, politicians and civil servants have limited time for fresh challenges. But either continuing the current strategy or altering it will have major implications.

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