Opinion

Newton Emerson: We should be careful about where we pin our post-Brexit trade hopes

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

The DUP is isolated in its support for Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals. Picture by Aaron Chown/PA Wire
The DUP is isolated in its support for Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals. Picture by Aaron Chown/PA Wire The DUP is isolated in its support for Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals. Picture by Aaron Chown/PA Wire

Kevin Holland, the new chief executive of Invest NI, is a former adviser to the British embassy in Beijing.

At least there is one person of relevant influence in Northern Ireland who knows what sort of world Brexit is sending us out into, even if he is too much of a diplomat to say so.

China is purposefully extending its economic power as a political weapon and does not hesitate to use it for the pettiest of domestic reasons. This week the country’s state broadcaster scrapped plans to show US basketball games after the general manager of a team in Houston tweeted his support for Hong Kong protesters.

This was despite toe-curling apologies from the manager, the team and the US National Basketball Association.

China Central Television replied: “Comments that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech” - even if made by a US citizen, in Houston, on a California-based website.

The Chinese government believes the global system of laws and norms, including human rights, is a biased Western construct built on the legacy of imperialism, so breaking the rules is legitimate to correct the historical balance.

Even those in the West who sympathise with that analysis should not be rushing headlong towards the sharp end of Beijing’s revenge. Few have any trouble spotting the danger when Donald Trump dismisses the international rules-based order. But nobody in Northern Ireland seems to be asking if it is wise to become dependent on the Chinese Communist Party.

Consider the example of our universities. Ulster University has had a wide-ranging partnership with China’s Ministry of Education since 2011, under the brand name of the Confucius Institute. Other universities in Europe and the United States have begun closing their Confucius Institutes due to concerns over academic freedom and interference.

Queen’s University Belfast has built up its own portfolio of “strategic partnerships” with China, including a joint medical college and collaborative engineering research.

How free does this leave both universities to examine the suppression of China’s Uighur Muslims? For two institutions that promote themselves on their justice and human rights expertise they are remarkably quiet about what is arguably the greatest single human rights abuse currently taking place, and certainly the most ominous for the future.

There are increasingly interesting parallels between Northern Ireland and Hong Kong, not just in terms of public disorder but in the politics, institutions and law negotiated by Britain. Ulster and Queen’s universities have been at the forefront of developing our peace and conflict experience as an export commodity. In this instance, however, dare their academics even tweet about it?

The Stormont executive set up a trade bureau in Beijing in 2014, with the Chinese government opening a consulate in Belfast the same year. Nothing has interrupted the search for Chinese money since, including the collapse of devolution.

Last year, a Northern Ireland trade delegation to China was led by civil service chief David Sterling, who penned a newspaper opinion piece declaring: “Northern Ireland's relationship with China is an important one. It’s about much more than just doing one-off business deals. It is about developing an enduring partnership to collaborate on many areas that will deliver positive outcomes for all our communities.”

Even in the limbo of indirect rule, a civil servant should be more circumspect about a one-party state that has not permitted an election in 70 years.

Now our desperate farmers are being told to pin their hopes on a post-Brexit free trade deal with China. New Zealand signed the first such deal in 2008, to great fanfare. It has since become enormously controversial, with accusations of Chinese political and security meddling and concerns the Kiwi economy is being diverted from normal development. Is this what success is meant to look like for Northern Ireland?

It is important to keep a perspective: the People’s Liberation Army is hardly about to appear on the streets of Belfast.

However, the willingness of our officials, politicians and business leaders to prostrate themselves before Beijing is a significant indicator of how pathetic we already are, even with the potential clout of Europe behind us.

The world and our place in it only looks set to get worse.