TNAG-2714-FCO40-3920-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 57

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FOREIGN AFFAIRS SELECT

JAMES LEE

MR. ALASTAIR GOODLAD

14 JULY 1993

COMMITTEE

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CHAIRMAN:

Do you think that the figures which don't look too good are slightly distorted by the fact that firms with a British component based in Hong Kong are in fact doing an enormous amount of business and that this doesn't really show up in the figures of bilateral trade between the UK and China? Is that correct?

MR. ALASTAIR GOODLAD;

That is certainly a factor, that a lot goes into China through Hong Kong. Nonetheless, we should be doing a great deal better bilaterally than we have been and I am sure we shall.

CHAIRMAN;

We have got

I think we shall certainly wish to return to that. two more questions for you, one on the human rights issued raised particularly by Lord Howe's visit.

Mr. Wareing.

MR.

ROBERT WAREING:

I wonder, Minister, how Britain can exert more influence on China in order to improve the standards of human rights in that country. I was very perturbed, as no doubt you were, to read the report of Lord Howe's delegation. What he found there quite clearly was a very authoritarian regime with no respect whatsoever for the rule of law, where the judiciary is totally subordinate to the bureaucracy and clearly that can't by any stretch of the imagination fit into the Government's definition of "good government" in another country and it does seem to me that whilst