China: MPs demand economic policy change
MPs have demanded that Britain reconsider its economic relationship with China.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “We run to China to buy goods and to invest, it is time for us now to review every single programme here in the UK and around the free world.
“We learnt a lesson 80 years ago about appeasement of dictators, maybe that should be applied today.”
Bob Seely, another Conservative MP, added: “We were slow to prepare for the new authoritarianism in Russia and now China. Will [Dominic Raab] take the feelings and the sentiment that he’s heard today from the House on Huawei, on other issues, on board?”
Mr Raab said: “It is right to say that what is at threat here is not just individual obligations in relation to the people of Hong Kong, but a wider question of China trying to recraft the rules of the international system”.
He added that while the UK did not want a bad relationship with China, “we will not do anything that imperils our vital interests and we will not lie down and sacrifice our values for the purposes of trade, commerce or anything like that”.
