Now Ken is kowtowing

The Mayor is subordinating his principles to pragmatism by visiting China, a country that denies even the most basic human rights

Published in the Evening Standard 6 April 2006

I was at the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards the other day, a ceremony unlike any other. For the nominees were all reluctant: each one of them would prefer a world in which their work was unnecessary.

Take the Index Whisteblowing Award. The nominees were people who had exposed gross wrongdoing in their home countries: a Kenyan journalist who had told the truth about political corruption, a US intelligence analyst who had spoken out about alleged illegal eavesdropping. Not one of them was present: some had been thrown in jail, one had been shot dead.

It made for a strange kind of competition: which among that group counted as a "winner"? The award went to Huang Jingao, a local Communist party official in southern China who had dared post an open letter on a party website, complaining that high-level officials were blocking his efforts to root out corruption. Last November he was jailed for life.

His award was picked up by the exiled London-based Chinese poet, Yang Lian. Gently, he talked of how the west had grown used to buying goods from China, their price kept low by cheap labour. "But no one asks why workers in China are so cheap. It's because there are no unions, no pensions, no freedom of expression. Workers in North Korea would be even cheaper!"

It's his words I hear when I contemplate the travel plans of our mayor, who on Saturday, along with 2012 Chairman Sebastian Coe, Chelsea boss Peter Kenyon, more than 50 business leaders, representatives of London's universities, fashion designers, the English National Ballet and, wait for it, Girls Aloud, will board a plane bound for China.

They will spend a full week in Shanghai and Beijing, as Ken Livingstone busily promotes London as both a financial centre and tourism destination, setting up new offices in both cities. He'll also be in learning mode, keen to pick up useful tips, whether it be from the Dongtan eco-city an hour's ferry ride from Shangai or from the Beijing authorities as they gear up to stage the 2008 Olympics.

The City Hall press corps can hardly wait. They know that Ken abroad is always good copy: when he was in New York, he broke his schedule and walked to the Zoo - to check out the reptile house. Imagine what he'll get up to in the land of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.

Few will question the ethics of the mayor's taking such a trip. After all, the world is clearly sufficiently comfortable with China that it awarded Beijing one of its biggest prizes, the Olympic Games. Our own government is equally relaxed: Tony Blair met China's president four times in the last year. And London, it seems, is quite happy to cosy up to the People's Republic, working closely with the Chinese Embassy in staging key parts of the China in London cultural season which concluded last month.

Everyone it seems is eager to do business with China, despite the fact that the country is still ruled by a dictatorship that denies the most basic democratic freedoms. Even Google, whose corporate motto is "Don't be evil", is ready to take China's yuan in return for conniving in censorship of the Internet.

So it's no surprise that Coe and the business titans are heading east. But it is odd that Ken is leading them there. For the mayor is usually stubbornly principled when it comes to foreign policy, and to hell with the diplomatic niceties. This is the man who declared George W Bush "The greatest danger to life on this planet" and who called Ariel Sharon a war criminal who belonged "in jail, not in office."

It's not as if there's any doubt over China's record on human rights. As luck would have it, the current edition of The Liberal magazine includes a piece by Ken's former partner, Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK, detailing cases like those of the writer Shi Tao, forced to perform hard labour, or the academic He Depu, jailed for daring to speak out for democracy.

How does the mayor reconcile these facts with the smiling visit he will make to the country next week? He won't meet any dissidents but plans, I'm told, to register his disapproval of, for example, Chinese policy in Tibet when he meets political officials. He doesn't want it to take over the discussion, but will make his views clear. You just know what the old Red Ken would have said about that, if it was some Tory politician heading to Beijing next week: mere lip service.

Ken's team also argue that the current trend in China is to be supported, that rising prosperity will lead, inevitably, to greater democracy, that once people are well-fed and well-housed they will demand their rights. Red Ken wouldn't have had much time for that one either: he would have said it's not good enough to give people cash now, telling them to wait for freedom tomorrow. Nor would the old Ken have been too sympathetic to the view that detente-style engagement with undemocratic regimes is the best approach: he would have called that coddling dictators.

No, the real argument that will put Ken on that plane on Saturday is realpolitik. He knows that China simply matters too much to London's economy to be shunned for the sake of what he would regard as gesture politics. On this matter, he will be realistic and do what needs to be done. And yet when it comes to other parts of the world, this pragmatism suddenly deserts him: he returns to the ideological firmness of yore.

I could accept the pragmatic decision to go to China if that's how Ken was across the board. Equally, I would admire him if he refused to go because he wanted to be as tough on China as he is, say, on Israel. But this inconsistency makes no sense - and the old Ken would have been the first to say so.

Posted on April 6, 2006 12:23 PM

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