Starmer should not be fooled by President Xi – he is not ready to compromise

Biden got the wrathful Red Emperor – and Starmer the impassive statesman. But make no mistake, writes Michael Sheridan, Xi’s ‘red lines’ apply as much to Britain as they do to America

If anyone needed a China reality check, the confidence and pride of its regime have been made plain by the sentencing of 45 democracy activists in Hong Kong to prison terms of between four and 10 years for organising a primary election.

The democrats were found guilty of “subversion” under a national security law imposed to bring the former British colony under the vague but absolutist powers which reign over the rest of the people’s republic. The three judges, all trained in the English legal tradition, had no qualms about the conduct of a case which obeyed the dictum of China’s “Red Emperor” Xi Jinping, that “north, south, east and west” the Communist Party commands all.

It could hardly have been better timed as a demonstration of his iron will. This week Xi bestrode the world stage at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in the dying days of the Biden administration, as president-elect Donald Trump scowled in the wings.

Britain has a walk-on part in this drama, by virtue of its links with Hong Kong and its anxious bet on economic growth through business with China. So it was a tale of two emperors when Xi met Keir Starmer in Rio not long after Xi’s final meeting with Joe Biden. Which one was real?

The prime minister got the benign emperor. The Chinese leader talked of a “vast space for cooperation in such areas as trade and investment, clean energy, financial services, healthcare and people’s wellbeing”, said his official news agency, Xinhua.

Xi conceded that “the two countries differ in history, culture, values, and social systems’, but vowed that they “share extensive common interests”. Not a word of imperial displeasure passed his lips – how the Whitehall mandarins must have purred.

The American president got the wrathful emperor, although Xi’s ire was obviously aimed at Trump and the new administration of China “hawks”.

“Containing China is unwise, unacceptable and bound to fail,” Xi declared. He told Biden that the two must treat each other as equals and he laid out what amounted to an ultimatum for the next four years.

“The Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, China’s path and system, and China’s development rights are four red lines for China. They must not be challenged,” he warned.

In case Starmer’s unruffled advisers do not trouble him with too much detail – why spoil a nice day in Rio, after all? – I can help him decode these remarks, faithfully recorded by Xinhua, for they apply to Britain as well as the United States.

The “Taiwan question” is a warning to stop political, diplomatic and defence contacts with the democratically ruled island of 23 million people. Visits to Britain by Taiwanese officials or politicians will be watched, as will visits to Taipei. It is a threat.

“Democracy and human rights” means the Chinese version; criticism of the Xi regime’s acts will be deemed hostile whether it applies to Hong Kong, the mainly Muslim Xinjiang region or Tibet – let alone the routine repression of Chinese lawyers, teachers, writers, business people, religious groups and minority activists.

Starmer did raise Taiwan, human rights and sanctions on British parliamentarians critical of Beijing, and he mustered up the courage to say that the British government was “concerned” by the reports of the 76-year-old publisher Jimmy Lai’s “deterioration” in solitary confinement in Hong Kong. At this point, according to the Politico website, British reporters were “bundled out” of the room. (Presumably Xi’s “vast space for cooperation” was not sufficient to accommodate them.)

Lai’s trial is due to resume on Wednesday, and the court will ignore a new finding by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that he has been unlawfully detained and should be released.

Xi’s third “red line” around China’s “path and system” is a broad and sweeping affirmation that all foreign poisons, such as a free press and an independent judiciary, condemned at the outset of his reign in an edict called “Document Number Nine”, are anathema.

Finally (and ominously for those, like the prime minister and his chancellor, who hope that better ties with Beijing will help economic growth), Xi’s reference to China’s “development rights” means that it is business on his terms only, with its panoply of state subsidies, export controls, import restrictions, technology theft and decisive moves to flood world markets with cheap goods such as electric cars.

Perhaps Starmer could say that he hasn’t been told as much in terms, but President Biden and his successor have definitely got the memo. The authentic Red Emperor was the one who met Biden, not the impassive statesman who extended a cursory hand to the former human rights barrister.

Michael Sheridan, longtime foreign correspondent and diplomatic editor of The Independent, is the author of ‘The Red Emperor’