Former Leader of the Conservative Party slams the Chinese Communist Party

Sir Iain Duncan Smith accused China of “using slave labour” in their economy and of “not obeying rules”.

The Co-Chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, told GB News: “On economics alone, China has broken every single rule that the WTO, the World Trade Organisation, set for inter-country trade.”

“For example, they use slave labour. That is, in humanitarian terms, terrible. A lot of it is from Tibetan men. And now we know about men from the Uyghur population of Xinjiang. But there are many others that go into slave labour. They make things that get into the international market. That gives them a ridiculous edge so they can keep their prices down.”

Sir Iain also criticised China’s subsidisation of industries, which also breaks WTO rules: “There are literally only three producers of telecoms equipment in the world to come from the West. The rest are all from China. They were subsidised to 100 per cent of bid value, which meant no other free world company can compete. You’re dealing with a country that doesn’t give a damn about how we obeying rules.”

“The companies in the West are every bit as good, and sometimes far better than what China does. But China chases them out of the market.”

The MP for Chingford and Woodford Green warned about historical precedents: “The world has to be fair and competitive in trade. It’s the order that we set up, particularly after the Second World War.”

“If you go back to the 1920s and 30s, we had a massive depression globally. Why? Because countries were subsidising their industries, and the result was competition stopped, that all the industries went bust. People were out of work, and the governments then had to pay for them. That led to the Second World War. Communists and the Nazis fighting on the streets came from the collapse in trade.”

On violations of humanitarian rights, Sir Iain said: “This is a country that regularly practices forced organ harvesting. They’re the biggest organ exporters around the world. The way they get those organs is by arresting people they don’t like. While they’re still alive, they take the organs out of them, and then they execute them. And this is done to people like the Falun Gong, who are believers in an ancient Chinese religion. Christians are persecuted in China right now, even as Starmer is over there having a happy day out.”

The Tory MP criticised China’s approach to democracy: “They have trashed an international agreement with the UK. It was called the Sino-British agreement on Hong Kong. They just decided that they had enough of people asking for democracy, and they smashed the agreement and said, we’re not going to institute the National Security Law.”

“And it’s for that reason that many have fled here to the UK. But of course, that brave man, Jimmy Lai, who owned his own business, who never had any other passport except a British passport, stayed put. Why? Because he said he had to give hope to those many young campaigners. He knew he’d get arrested, and they trumped up the charges, and they want him to die.”

“What a brave man and the government had failed endlessly to do anything about him. Why are we not raising the trashing of the Hong Kong agreement and the persecution of decent people?”

“Starmer doesn’t just have a burner phone. His whole aircraft had to be changed so that it’s become a burner aircraft. So, as it sits on the tarmac in Beijing, nobody can get to it electronically, which is what they know will happen. That tells you this is a brutal, disgusting regime that is intolerant, breaks all the rules, executes who it’s like it literally persecutes everybody that disagrees with it.”