The one question David Cameron needs to ask the Chinese President during his state visit

Where is Wang Yu?

Wang Yu, the lawyer of late Chinese human rights activist Cao Shunli, poses during an interview in Hong Kong on March 20, 2014. (PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

At 3am on the morning of 9 July, 44-year-old Chinese lawyer Wang Yu sent a worried text to her friends saying that her internet and electricity had been cut off. Then at 4.17am she sent another even more alarming message: people were trying to break into her home. When her friends tried to contact her later that morning, she was nowhere to be found.

It’s the sort of chilling chronology you could imagine a barrister reading out to a jury in a courtroom. Instead, this is an almost commonplace story in China, where the police are breaking into homes and taking lawyers and activists away. Wang’s arrest marked the beginning of a major crackdown in China in which 245 lawyers and activists have been rounded up. She along with another 29 are still missing.

Wang works for the Beijing-based Fengrui Law Firm,which has been accused of being at the centre of a “criminal gang”. In recent years the firm has taken on a large number of high-profile human rights cases, including the case of prominent Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, currently serving a life sentence in jail.

As he receives the Chinese president Xi Jinping during his state visit, does David Cameron think the plight of Wang Yu important enough to mention? I would hope so.

Chinese officials are trying hard to keep human rights off the agenda during this trip. China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, has already warned against the UK using human rights to “interfere in other countries’ internal affairs”. By that standard world leaders should stay quiet over the fact that China executes more people than all other countries – Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia et al – put together. They should ignore China’s forbidding and punishing of those who seek to peacefully express their cultural or religious identity. And the likes of Mr Cameron should simply overlook the crackdown on China’s beleaguered human rights lawyers.

However, it looks as if the Chinese government may get its way. The UK is on a charm offensive with China, and a grateful Chinese state media has noticed. The latter recently praised George Osborne over his “modest manner” and “pragmatism” during the Chancellor’s own visit to China last month.In other words, he didn't mention human rights.

This rosy new relationship obviously comes at a price. It’s entirely predicated on the condition that any human rights discussion is at most muted, but better still absent altogether. And of course China knows very well how to deal with dissent. It’s as adept at punishing countries that bring up human rights too forcefully as they are at arresting troublesome artists or quarrelsome lawyers.

Yet are we really to be cowed by China’s trade clout and punitive methods? Are we prepared to meekly trade away our ability to speak over these issues? The UK does not have to kowtow to this Chinese conditionality, in which trade deals are dependent on us holding our tongue. China’s appalling human rights record – which has got markedly worse under Xi Jinping – needs discussing, not sweeping under ceremonial red carpets.

I’d like to see David Cameron outright ask Xi Jinping a very simple question: where is Wang Yu now? She and her fellow lawyers were targeted because they dared to stand up for the victims of China’s swingeing human rights abuses. The very least they can expect from a powerful British prime minister, safe in the splendour of Buckingham Palace, is that he might do the same.