Letters to the editor respond to Simon Tisdall's article on China's 'ethnic unity' law, with correspondents calling for meaningful diplomacy and criticizing western governments' selective approach to human rights.
Western Governments Accused of Lip Service
Jennifer Hubbard of Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria, asserts that western governments continue to pay lip service to human rights in China while pursuing short-term economic goals, which she describes as ultimately destructive to their own productivity. She references the pattern since the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, and criticizes Tisdall's faint hope that young urban Chinese might overturn Xi Jinping's regime as a judgment on western failure to show foresight, integrity, effective diplomacy, joined-up thinking, or action.
Hubbard notes that western governments rely on the self-sacrifice of individuals such as Jimmy Lai, Lobga Rangzen, and countless unnamed individuals who put their lives on the line, while the west wrings its hands and weeps crocodile tears. She argues that their response to the latest abuse of power seems limited to changes in extradition policy to protect their own citizens, but that the law alone will not protect critics of Xi's regime wherever they are.
Analogy of Welsh Not Highlights Selective Condemnation
Geoffrey Dixon of Burston, Norfolk, points out that Tisdall's article concedes and then ignores the American administration's 'disdain for international law and national sovereignty (as seen in Venezuela and Greenland)', tariff wars against allies, and unreliable Washington. Dixon argues that every charge laid against Beijing's ambitions applies to conduct the article treats as merely regrettable background.
Dixon also criticizes Tisdall's analogy of a British prime minister banning the Welsh language from schools, noting that Britain did precisely that with the Welsh Not, suppressed Gaelic, and resisted Irish self-determination by force for centuries. He concludes that the analogy reminds us that the moral vantage point claimed is a recent acquisition, and that condemnation of repression in Xinjiang and Tibet is weakened when deployed selectively as an instrument of strategic competition.
Scottish Referendum Precedent Cited
Jane Renton of Edinburgh responds to Tisdall's hypothetical about a British prime minister telling Scots they could not have their own parliament, noting that it happened in 1979. In the referendum that year, a majority of those voting said yes to a Scottish parliament, but the Cunningham amendment from an MP representing Islington in London required 40% of the electorate to vote yes, delaying the parliament for another 20 years. Renton adds that had this rule been applied in the Brexit referendum, the UK would still be in the EU, and references Val McDermid's novel '1979' which covers this topic.
