Luke de Pulford is a global human right mpaigner, particularly in the areas of modern slavery and human rights abuses in China

He is a co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and the creator of ‘Arise’ an anti-slavery charity.

Luke sits as a Commissioner on the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and advises the World Uyghur Congress. In 2020 he was awarded the Bene Merenti medal by Pope Francis for his contribution to the anti-slavery movement—the youngest ever recipient.

Misha Zelinsky caught up with Luke for a chinwag about why human rights abuses matter to us all, the abuse of Uyghurs in China and what can be done, the fight for democracy in Hong Kong, why global coordination is more important than ever and how the democracies can prevail over autocracies in the long run.

TRANSCRIPT:

Misha Zelinsky:

Luke, welcome to Diplomates. How are you mate?

Luke de Pulford:

I am very well indeed. Very pleased to be here. Thank you.

Misha Zelinsky:

And of course, we’re recording this via the magic of Zoom. You are in London, I believe?

Luke de Pulford:

I am indeed. It’s sunny West London today, the first time in at least two months. So-

Misha Zelinsky:

It’s very good. And well mate, look, what’s the place to start? But I thought we might start with, when we’ll go through some of the other things you’ve done throughout your really amazing career thus far. But we might start with perhaps the most high profile piece of work that you’ve got on the way at the moment, which is the IPAC, the International parliamentary Alliance on China. For those who don’t know, for those who aren’t super China watches, although a lot of my listeners are, can you maybe just explain what it is and then we might get into how and why you set it up?

Luke de Pulford:

Yeah. I mean the easiest way to describe it as an international and cross party group of backbench politicians that have just come together to try to reform their own countries approach to China Policy. In a nutshell, that’s what it is. And we started off with eight legislatures. I’m not saying parliaments because all countries, because they’re not all. We’ve got the EU as well, which is obviously across those lines. But it started off with eight and we’ve grown to 20 legislatures and over 200 members now from all political parties. And I mean, a very, very broad ideological spectrum. So that’s what IPAC is.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so how is it that you sort of a human rights campaign, how he ended up in this pretty interesting international space and why did you get involved?

Luke de Pulford:

It’s actually a great question because my training is not as a China analyst. I don’t really come at it from that angle. I come at it almost exclusively actually from the human rights angle which has led to the other stuff. So let me tell the story like this. I have been working in and around the UK parliament for the better part of 15 years now. And for that entire period, I’ve been working to try to defend persecuted minorities in various parts of the world. So for all of that period of time, there’s been some focus on persecuted minorities in China. That’s always been a motivating thing for me, not a great specialism, but a motivating thing for me. I did a lot on the persecution of Christians in China about a decade ago. Anyway, in about 2015, I had to do some work on something called the Modern Slavery Act.

Luke de Pulford:

I know you’ve had some recent legislation in Australia as well, molded along the same thing. Actually, your legislation is better than ours. But in 2015, I was quite involved in trying to make that act stronger and wanted to do more and modern slavery. I ended up founding a charity, which is actually my remunerated work and what takes up most of my time. And that’s an international charity that works in countries of origin from where people are trafficked and focuses on prevention. So we do work in Nigeria, Eastern Europe, Philippines, India, some other countries. Now, the more you get into this area of modern slavery and exploitation, the more you realize that there were just some massive elephants in the room. And it had been clear to me that whole period, I knew about the situation of Turkic minorities in Western China, or you guys and others.

Luke de Pulford:

I’d known about that for some time. I couldn’t understand why nobody in the anti-slavery community would ever speak about it. You’ve got all of these NGOs, you’ve got all of these governments. No one would ever say, “We reckon there are a million people in camps in Western China, is that not slavery? And then what about these forced labor transfer schemes that are happening all over their country? Tens of thousands of people being bused around, is that not slavery? What about this organ trafficking?” For those who don’t know, modern slavery and human trafficking, organ trafficking is just a category of that, falls under that category. Organ trafficking, there’s a lot of noise around that in China, a lot of disputed evidence, but a lot of noise. “Why does anyone ever talk about that?” So it led me to look into it more and to start to say to some of my colleagues, “Why is this massive enslaving nation here not ever spoken about as a perpetrator of human trafficking and modern slavery? This makes no sense.”

Luke de Pulford:

And this led me more and more into a position where I came to see the Chinese Communist Party, particularly as arguably the world’s biggest human rights abuser. But, and this is the crucial point, not just within their own boundaries, a human rights threat to the rest of the world as well. And we can unpack that a little bit more as we go on. But that led me to believe this something is got to be done about this. And we can’t do it merely from country to country where individual countries or individual politicians become sidelines, exposed, painted as extremists out there in the corner. Actually this ought to be a mainstream concern. And if the problem, if the thing preventing those people from speaking out is a lack of support, is a lack of international consensus, then that’s the problem that we need to try to confront.

Luke de Pulford:

So what we ended up doing is speaking to politicians, realizing all over the world, we were pushing on an open door. There’s so much concern about China. The biggest and the great sadness for me is that, that content is everywhere. It’s even in those belt and road countries where people are even less free to speak than they are in Western democracies. But those guys don’t feel able to get involved in IPAC, if you see what I mean. So we started building out the alliance from there developing its principles, making sure that it could hang together as a very diverse group. And that’s what we’ve been on ever since.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so I suppose one of the ways to judge the success of these types of ventures is how much you’ve gotten out of the scheme arm of the CCP. Now, my understanding is you’ve been named personally as a person colluding with Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, who was obviously the owner of the Apple News outlet there and a very high profile person. Have you been personally targeted in other ways? I mean, what risks has this brought to you in sticking your neck out like this against an incredibly powerful globally forward projecting regime?

Luke de Pulford:

Well yeah. I mean, I’ve had for about 18 months some guy and I presume it’s a man in Hong Kong. I know he’s in Hong Kong because I traced in there who has created basically versions of my identity. Mainly spoofed email addresses, but other things as well, has written to a lot of people pretending to be me. He actually successfully resigned my Conservative Party membership, believe it or not. So he had gleaned enough information about me to go through the process to do that. I’ll be honest with you, I see it as a low level nuisance. People can overplay this stuff. It’s not a pleasant, I don’t care and I don’t see it as much of a threat. It bothers other people more than it bothers me. And what I have dealt with is extraordinarily low level compared to what some other people in this country have and elsewhere. Like the Uyghurs and Xi or the Hong Kong has over here, the intimidation that they’re going through is real.

Luke de Pulford:

I’ve just got some annoyance on the internet. So I don’t take it that seriously. But yeah, I think I’m on the radar. Not very high up on the radar, I don’t want to overblow it. I’m not particularly high-profile. I do a lot of the activity, I do a lot of the coordination. But they’re much more concerned with the figureheads. This is why you see them target Jimmy Lai in the way that they do. And it’s just association with Jimmy Lai that’s got me onto that list and the global times as occasionally had a pop. But it’s not at the level of many others, is what I want to say. So I don’t want to come across as pleading about how much of a tough time I have.

Luke de Pulford:

I’ve just got some idiot who sends emails in my name to colleagues, sometimes to family members, to my political party, and many others with what I hope would be transparently stupid emails. However, one of his email addresses was, and I’m not joking here, lukedepulford.saint@gmail.com. Now-

Misha Zelinsky:

That’s not your email address?

Luke de Pulford:

No, that is not my email address. And the thing that was slightly annoying about it is that a lot of people responded to that believing I would have created that email address for myself. So that was the thing that was more upsetting than the intimidation itself.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, I was going to say, made look as a labor guy. He might’ve been doing you a favor resigning you from the Conservative Party mate, but I certainly won’t make any comment about that now.Yeah.

Luke de Pulford:

Laughing

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, I mean Luke, before we get into the specifics and I really want to dig into the specifics about human rights abuses in China by the CCP. What does success look like for the IPAC? Right? So obviously if you’ve got information being exchanged, and coordination between people concerned, and obviously I think a big focuses on it being bipartisan or nonpartisan, multi-partisan, I mean, in parliamentary democracies. But what does success look like in your role?

Luke de Pulford:

So that’d be honest that in two ways. IPAC really is primarily a campaigning organization in the sense that it tries to frame the debate. So in a superficial way, success for us would be governments, executives picking up on the stuff that we’re talking about, and that has happened. So one very good example, the revocation of extradition treaties with Hong Kong after the imposition of the national security law, that was an IPAC campaign. And the way that it worked, and it was a great affirmation of the whole model, was that we realized that this was an issue. We had an emergency meeting with a number of Hong Kong dissidents, and immediately these cross-party folk who’ve been selected for their ability to have influence within their own parties got to work. I mean, it was within 12 hours of that meeting that the Canadians had announced that they were going to revoke extradition treaty.

Luke de Pulford:

Why? Because is loved by his administration, and because Garnett, January was loved by his administration. And Garnett was able to say, “This is going to be a big party political headache unless as you move on it.” And he was saying, “We should be moving on it guys.” So it happened. And that set the tone, and we did something similar all over the world, including Australia. Now, that is a superficial way of saying these campaigns can work when they’re well deployed, strategically deployed in each jurisdiction. But there’s a more subtle way that IPAC is starting to bring about a sense of success which is that, in more exposed economies, economies which are more open to economic coercion like New Zealand and like some others. Before IPAC, there hadn’t been much of a skeptical corporates about China, and there isn’t that much anymore.

Luke de Pulford:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not overplaying it. But there are plans now for organ trafficking legislation in New Zealand that tries to deal with a problem in China, which were unthinkable before IPAC. So what’s happened there? What’s happened is that, what would have looked in New Zealand like very isolated backbenchers now has the implied credibility of a global network of very high profile politicians. And that bolsters their efforts in their countries, particularly for smaller nations for more exposed economies. So that is a big strategic thing for us as well, and where we’re going to do more and more of that. So you’ve got come two levels, say, you’ve got the campaign victories, and they’ve been some, and then you’ve got the building up of a broader movement that helps some of the smaller exposed nations. I think success is starting to look like that. The big answer to that though is that, overarching success is having G7 wide strategy on China and Alliance of Democracies moving together realizing just how perilous the threat posed by China is. And we’re a long way away from that.

Misha Zelinsky:

And I’m keen to get to that, but let’s let’s dig into the human rights piece that we’ve been dancing around. I mean, Luke, I think firstly, the most probably egregious and you’ve touched on a number. But I mean, the situation is Xinjiang with the Uighurs. I mean, perhaps firstly, a quick recap of what is happening, what are the reports that we know about what are the things that are being reported. And I suppose, how worried should we be and what responsibility do we have in democratic nations to act on this?

Luke de Pulford:

So a brief overview of I think where we are in terms of the evidence. We have a lot of credible evidence of mass extrajudicial detention, which I don’t think anybody disputes anymore of at least 1 million people at any one time. There is a credible evidence of forced labor, which affects many of our supply chains, many of our best known and best loved brands. You have credible reports of forced sterilization and birth prevention among ethnic groups, which again is not broadly disputed. And then you’ve got a whole load of stuff which we’re starting to hear about and is beginning to be corroborated that people aren’t really sure about. Things like family separation, we know that that’s happening but to what degree, it isn’t really known.

Luke de Pulford:

There’s a lot of speculation about those numbers, but we know that children are being taken away from their families and reeducated. We know that there are certainly cases of organ trafficking, how deeply they’re linked to the state. There is dispute about, although the China Tribunal in 2018 reporters, and it was pretty clear that a state sponsored forced organ harvesting in China. So taking those things as a broad picture, what you end up with is the consideration of whether or not these things taken together constitute crimes against humanity and/or genocide. And those things are international crimes with international definitions. So I mean, I guess where the question goes is, “How are they going to managing genocide?” And the reason-

Misha Zelinsky:

And so let [inaudible 00:14:54] that because I mean the definitions in this space are important, right? And that’s been evolving quite a bit in recent times. So can’t believe that.

Luke de Pulford:

They are hugely important. But the irritating thing is, it’s also a bit of a misnomer because them being international crimes, we will only ever know if China has committed genocide if there is a court judgment saying that they have. And the same for crimes against humanity. So everything that we’re dealing with now is speculative. So you’ll get a load of information, and a lawyer could produce a legal opinion. And the most damning conclusion that a lawyer could reach now is, “We think that there’s a good case that,” which is what they’ve done. So we had two very weighty legal opinions. One from Essex Court Chambers who were subsequently sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party, who produced a very weighty legal opinion. Which concluded that there was a very, very good case to be made that China had committed both crimes against humanity and genocide. On the basis that the grounds of the genocide convention and the grounds required the legal thresholds for crimes against humanity were clearly met.

Luke de Pulford:

And more importantly, that the intent was there. And this is the problem with genocide. It’s establishing intent is the problem. It’s an extremely high bar. It’s very rare. And for that reason, people shy away from it understandably. The problem, and allow me to digress ever so slightly on this. The problem with genocide is that we are bound not just to punish the thing. Signatory to the Genocide Convention are bound to prevent it as well. So you are bound to prevent and punish genocide. And it is not possible to prevent genocide if you are unable to use the word genocide without a court determination, without having prosecuted somebody. Genocide prosecutions, bear with me, take decades, decades. Everyone will be dead by the time anyone in China is prosecuted for genocide if and when they are.

Luke de Pulford:

So the question for us as democratic states, and this is the really difficult conundrum becomes, “When do you act to prevent a genocide according to your legal duties, your duties under the Genocide Convention, when do you act to prevent it?” My argument would be, if you have very weighty tomes from numerous, very diverse international sources saying that, “It seems as if the grounds for genocide the match. And it seems as if there is intent or at least some evidence of intent.” I believe that triggers our duty to prevent. And the problem is, we’re not doing any of that. So we’re hiding from it. People don’t like these duties. They don’t like the Genocide Convention. Like in the UK, our policy is not to use the word genocide at all until there is a court determination. Hence, we failed to use the word in association with what was happening to Yazidis and other religious minorities [inaudible 00:17:56] about the clearest and most obvious genocide and recent times in my view. Haven’t used it in relation to what’s happened to the Rohingya.

Luke de Pulford:

Didn’t use it back in Rwanda, didn’t use it around the time of [inaudible 00:18:06]. The UK has never succeeded in recognizing a genocide while one was ongoing. Why? Because of this policy, which requires everyone to be dead in order to act. So my big argument around it would be, “Guys, let’s not get too caught up in whether or not we believe that this legal threshold is met. What we have to do is say, “All right, are there reasonable, diverse, independent objective of analysts who believe there is a case that there may be genocide attacks taking place in that part of the country?”” Okay. And that case governments have a very, very strong duty to try to act to prevent. And that is the duty placed upon us by the Genocide Convention. And we’re failing in that duty right now.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so then what does action look like? So leaving aside this complexity around the relationship between the legal avenues and the politics. What is actual action look like? So let’s say we were to… And Luke, I mean, we know that the CCPs attitudes international judgments, the law of the sea, et cetera, with the South China Sea, annexations are pretty dubious. Anyway, what does action look like? What does meaningful intervention look like when dealing with this question of exploitation, the way you’ve described it the way it is?

Luke de Pulford:

Again, very difficult question to answer and the reason being that no one’s ever done it. So while you’ve had the US take a very different approach to the rest of the world. They’ve made political, what we would call political determinations of genocide, rather than legal ones. So the UK defers to the legal system. The US has happy to say, “We recognize genocide.” But because they have a different relationship to the Genocide Convention, it doesn’t lead on to the corresponding action that we might expect. So after the Yazidis, stuff happened, don’t get me wrong, but not in a way that we would have normally framed it. So let me answer it like this. The ICJ, so the International Court of Justice, Bosnia case was quite clear. It tried to probe this and say, “What are our country’s duties? What is actually triggered here when countries believe that a genocide might be developing.” It is very, very clear. It says that it has to use all available means to try to bring it to an end or reasonable available means.

Luke de Pulford:

And that’s a very, very broad gambit there like, “What does that mean?” Well, I would say what it doesn’t mean is deepening bilateral trade with that country, which is what the UK is currently doing. Dominic Raab on the one hand says they have industrial scale human rights abuses. Those are his words, that’s a quote. And then on the other hand, we find that we are reopening economic and financial dialogue and JETCO economic summit with them. That is not consistent. You can’t do that. That makes no sense. That is not consistent with our international obligations. So it doesn’t mean that. Well, it could well mean, all the way anything along this very, very long spectrum of possible bilateral and then multilateral actions, which start with, I think certainly reducing dependency move into punitive economic sanctions and then into multilateral action, multilateral sanctions.

Luke de Pulford:

And then there are a whole load of other actions that we’d never want to talk about and hope never got up to and including some degree of humanitarian intervention which I wouldn’t advocate and certainly, certainly not now. But that ought to be on the table and has been on the table in the past when people have been talking about mass atrocity crimes, okay? So not talking about China, but talking generally humanitarian intervention has been something which has been, generally speaking conceptually on the radar as-

Misha Zelinsky:

You’ve got Bosnia for example in the ’90s.

Luke de Pulford:

Exactly. Yeah. So nuclear option very, very worst case scenario. This is something which has been on the radar for the international community, I wouldn’t advocate it for China. But you see what I mean? There’s a very broad spectrum. And right now I’d look at the international community and say, “Are you doing that stuff?” And the answer is a resounding, no.

Misha Zelinsky:

I mean, it sounds like you would probably advocate for things like tariffs on the cotton produce from Xinjiang, which is 85% of China’s cotton production comes from there. And an enormous amount of that obviously goes into global textile production. So the brands that we’re used to that that seems like an obvious place. I’m seeing more pressure coming in companies like that, like H&M for example, and Nike and others. But a little bit more of a specific example. There’s a lot to talk about the Winter Olympics coming up in Beijing. What’s the world’s obligation here in terms of boycotting it? I’m seeing it coming on the radar United States, Nancy Pelosi’s talked about partial boycott, which is essentially the fleets would go, but dignitaries wouldn’t. How do you see that given that, Olympic games, one are, a celebration of humanity and two are, arguably, opportunities for propaganda and global soft power projection?

Luke de Pulford:

So the Olympic games, part of the reason that they’re so resistant to any involvement or capitulating to pressure around human rights abuse is very reasonable. Having this global show of unity is important, and they’ve a long history of doing that. The Olympic truce is a very ancient thing. It was supposed to be a way of waring nations allowing people to get to the games back in ancient times. Olympic truce is very old. I think the argument around what’s happening in Western China is that, on this, let’s say sliding scale of abuses, some things are simply beyond the pale. And enabling a big international sporting event implies this credibility, impeach credibility to that nation that it does not deserve. And arguably makes the situation worse and imperils them.

Luke de Pulford:

So this is an argument I think now has real traction and can’t be denied. There’s a lot of opposition to an outright boycott. So IPAC is going to be doing something on this fairly soon. But even within this broad alliance of politicians, there is disagreement. There are people who wouldn’t wants to punish athletes who have spent four years training for something. It’s not their fault that the IOC has decided to do this and in Beijing. Why should they suffer? And you can see that there is a strong argument there. So some of us who are working on this same has started saying, “Well, why don’t we move the games, then it shouldn’t be there. There are lots of places that could put on a Winter Olympics and make short notice, what’s wrong with that?” And then the IOC said that they weren’t considering moving it.

Luke de Pulford:

So I think where it’s moving now is towards a diplomatic and commercial boycott, which is what Nancy Pelosi was talking about. And which I think enjoys pretty broad consensus. And I’d be surprised if that didn’t end up having major traction with executives. But I’d say this, in 1980, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the response to that was the US trying to lead a boycott of the games which were Russia, well in Soviet Union. And that boycott had huge success. Some people have forgotten about this. Mohammed Ali went around the world trying to persuade nations to stay away, he was quite successful. And some of these videos were quite hilarious. He was sent by Jimmy Carter and he went knocking on doors in African nations saying, “Don’t go to the Olympics.”

Luke de Pulford:

So I would just say, people are looking upon this as some kind of a really awful thing. We’ve done it before, we did it with good reason before. It resulted an accountable boycott the next Olympic Games by the way, in 1984. So it was all a bit of a mess. But I would put the question pretty simply, “Is what the Soviets did to Afghanistan worse than what the Chinese government is doing to Turkic Muslims and other minorities in Northwest China.” My strong response to that would be, no. And if it is show me the evidence. Because I don’t understand why 2 million people in concentration camps isn’t bad enough for us to think again about legitimizing the state which is perpetrating it.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, specifically talking about the state, the CCP, the party apparatus itself. One other area of I suppose, retaliation that democracies can impose have been broadly used against the Russians. But is this concept of the Magnitsky tiebacks were essentially sanctioned senior members of a regime for particular acts and prevent them from being able to travel or move money, et cetera. I mean, do you advocate for those types of things? I mean, that would be a bit more targeted way of dealing with some of these challenges, but of course brings enormous diplomatic risk.

Luke de Pulford:

Yes, I do. And you’re right. It does bring diplomatic risks. It’s quite funny actually, while we were pushing for the genocide amendment over here in the UK, which was a way of trying to get through this policy difficulty around genocide in the UK. Because there won’t ever be an international court case dealing with China because China will block it, but that’s a whole other point. But when we were dealing with that, I know that there were internal government conversations saying, “Should we just bring forward these Magnitsky sanctions?” And the response within government was, “That will be worse for us in this genocide of the member.” So you’re right. I think a huge diplomatic bounty is placed on the Magnitsky style approach. And that’s why I believe that they can be so valuable. But, and I’ve said this to Bill Browder and I don’t think he would disagree. “They are not a substitute for multi-lateral or binational action led by governments. And they can’t just be an excuse to get on with dealing with a perpetrating government, a government which has perpetrating human rights abuse because you’ve just singled out one of them.”

Luke de Pulford:

If we know anything about the Chinese Communist Party is that, these people don’t act unilaterally as if it was their idea to pursue genocidal policies in the Uighur region. I mean, come on, give me a break. The whole argument being made here is that this is a governmental approach. So for us to back Magnitsky and only Magnitsky and say, “Oh, well that gets us off the hook for pursuing proper bilateral sanctions or multilateral sanctions is a real cop-out.” And I think we need to be clear about that.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so one thing I’m sort of curious about, I mean, I talked about it a little bit you were very, I think, brave in the way you dismissed concerns. But you can see governments being afraid of taking on the might of the CCP, right? So how do we deal with this challenge where the CCP is very belligerent when it wants to be about punishing those who don’t acquiesce to the party line or be that Chinese nationals or diaspora living in Western nations or indeed governments like apparently in Australia. We’ve got an enormous trade sections being posed on Australia as a result of a number of foreign policy and domestic decisions we’ve made in protection of our own sovereignty. How do you stand up to that? I mean, is it that little bit of that strengthened numbers piece you talked about with New Zealand or are there other ways?

Luke de Pulford:

Yeah, I think there other are ways and your right to point it out. People forget very easily that, particularly members of the Chinese Communist Party abroad are subject to party discipline. They can’t just go about their day integrating into the society in a way that you would normally expect. And even those Chinese nationals who are not members of the CCP are still, I mean, countless examples of this, monitored for their behavior. So I’ll give you an example. I mean, just this week, we were talking to the master of Jesus College Cambridge about various things that have been happening there. Its controversial relationship between that college and China. Which they strongly dispute, but everybody else thinks that they got too cozy. Anyway, a deputy foreign minister at the Chinese embassy to the UK keeps turning up at their events. And basically intimidates people, puts provocative stuff in the chats on Zooms and it makes careful notes of who’s turning up and that kind of thing

Luke de Pulford:

In that situation, the presence of somebody like that is in direct conflict or tension with the whole notion of academic freedom, particularly for those students who don’t enjoy it. Can’t possibly enjoy any sense of academic freedom if they’re having people like that breathing down the neck. Now, the reason I raise that example is, it shows the depth of the Malays here and what has been, I think Western democracy is very much asleep on the watch while this kind of stuff has happened. The reason I don’t really like this narrative, and I speak from the perspective of somebody who politically is quite across the spectrum myself. One of the reasons that having me try to maintain IPAC has kind of worked.

Luke de Pulford:

I really hate this whole reds under the bed stuff. And I do not want to be a part of any initiative which promotes suspicion of people who look like they have Eastern or Southeast Asian heritage, which has become a big, big problem, particularly on coronavirus origins. So I hate this stuff, but at the same time feel that we have to recognize what is actually going on here. And we haven’t really found a vernacular and a way of doing that, which sufficiently separates out the party from people. And because it’s a very difficult thing to do. And the Chinese Communist Party itself is spending so much political capital and effort in conflating those things. The nationalistic narrative exists for that purpose. Whether or not hand chauvinism has struggled in the Chinese Communist Party or not is another question.

Luke de Pulford:

But the fact that there’s been a resurgence in it and that ethnic nationalism is unquestionable, and you see that playing out. So that puts us in a tough position, “What are we supposed to do in response to that?” Well, I think the first thing is that, if we’re going to act against foreign interference, and if we’re going to act to protect our critical infrastructure, but then also our institutions of national life, our academic framework and the rest of it. If we’re going to do all of that successfully, we have to do that in a way which bears responsibility for the possible consequences of those actions. So what I’ve been advocating for, and this is a long way of saying, we actually need to ensure that there is a very deep rooted anti-racism work that goes alongside of it. Unfortunately, that’s a position that we can put in by the Chinese Communist Party. But I would strongly argue for us seeing those things as going in parallel, it’s too much of a risk otherwise.

Misha Zelinsky:

And it is increasingly difficult because of the CCP claims agency and ownership and demands fealty from the entire Chinese diaspora around the world. And of course China’s communities are not monolithic, but it is difficult when the regime itself the blender to, as you touched on now it. We spend all the time talking about Xinjiang, but actually I want to talk about particularly region of China that is obviously closely line to United Kingdom, traditionally relating to Hong Kong. I mean, given everything that’s happened there in terms of the crushing of the democratic movement in Hong Kong and they’ve unfortunately accelerated under the cover of coronavirus. I mean, do you still think that the UK or the Commonwealth has a special responsibility in what is the role of the UK particularly, but also nations like Australia in either push you back and what’s happening there, offering safe haven to those that want to get out?

Luke de Pulford:

So the UK has particular responsibilities, not just because of the longstanding relationship through colonialism then afterwards. We negotiated the treaty, the Sino British Joint Declaration. And that treaty puts an obligation upon us to safeguard and to protect Hong Kong’s way of life and autonomy. So those are very strong obligations that are on us. Now, the UK believes that it has discharged those obligations through the BNO scheme. Which for those who don’t know the, British National Overseas Passport scheme. So this is complicated, but there was a category of British national in Hong Kong for a while. So they have passports. And what the UK has said is that, those people who are eligible for BNO status British National Overseas status can come and live in the UK, and they have a pathway to citizenship.

Luke de Pulford:

So in terms of it like an immigration scheme for the UK, it is extremely generous. But it does nothing to uphold the way of life and autonomy of the people of Hong Kong. Being rude about it, it’s basically a surrender tactic. And the UK hasn’t done anything the whole time to account for totally destroying that treaty. And here’s the key point, and this is why it affects Australia. That treaty isn’t just the custody of the UK. It was launched at the United Nations. So all of the nations of the United Nations should bear responsibility for its implementation.

Luke de Pulford:

There have been no efforts, the whole China to account for breaking that treaty at the UN. No one has done anything on that. So what I would say is that, “Yeah. Okay. So a lifeboat scheme better than nothing.” Of course, it is. And for democratic nations to come together and to almost share the load, because there’s quite a lot of people who want to leave. Between them, I think is a good thing, but the BNO scheme has big gaps as well. And Australia could be one of the nations filling those gaps. For example, the BNO scheme doesn’t apply to anybody born after 1997. That’s most of the people who are on the streets of Hong Kong protesting.

Misha Zelinsky:

So youth led movement. Yeah.

Luke de Pulford:

So who’s the scheme for in the UK? And who’s going to pick up the slack for those people? Where they’re going to go? Those questions have been posed and not in my view adequately answered yet. But the lifeboat scheme is basically accepting that Hong Kong has been destroyed by China. And the only way for the people there to live anything remotely akin to their previous lives is to leave. Well, not good enough. We’re running away from holding this nation accountable. And it’s our legal responsibility, Australia is too because they’re a part of this group of nations which is supposed to uphold and emboss the Sino British Joint Declaration. So yeah, there’s a responsibility not just UK and Commonwealth, but UN.

Misha Zelinsky:

Now, one of the things, and we’ve touched on it. One of the sort of talking points from the CCP when the issues of domestic human rights abuses in China are raised either they’re denied or they devolve into whataboutism, right? So they like to play our own somewhat dubious, obviously records in the west historically. Whether it be British colonialism or in Australia, it’s treatment of indigenous or White Australia policy. Or even recently in Germany saying to the Germans, “Well, you guys would know what genocide looks like,” right? So I suppose, how important is getting our own house in order, but then also, how do you ensure that these arguments don’t devolve into tit for tat whataboutism and actually still focus on the stamping out of the behavior that we have been discussing?

Luke de Pulford:

I think the answer is simple, logic really, and governments growing a pair being a bit brutal about it. But if their answer to, we’ve got human rights abuses is you had historic human rights abuses. Then the answer is just got to be logical. That’s irrelevant. That has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on your existing human rights abuses. And it certainly does not. It certainly doesn’t diminish your culpability. So actually Reinhard Butikofer, who’s an MEP co-chair for IPAC and an very senior green. But also the EU’s point personal on Chinese, sort of heads up whatever the the committee is there on China. And it’s great. He really knows China. His answers to this was really interesting.

Luke de Pulford:

He gave a quote that said, something along the lines of, “The Holocaust cannot be used as a political football for rhetorical gain. If you believe that invoking that is going to absolve you from your responsibilities, always going to somehow deflect from the fact that you still haven’t allowed in any kind of independent investigation into interest Xinjiang, you’re mistaken.” I think that’s the right line. I think we just have to be a bit firmer about it and brutally logical in saying, “It’s got nothing to do with it.”

Misha Zelinsky:

Zooming out a little. Yeah. I mean, we’ve talked about human rights, which is like a global universal principle. But they are constructs traditionally at least in the modern sense of democracies and liberal democracies. And so what we’re really seeing in many ways here is a contest between autocracies and democracies. And I suppose, the alliances you’re talking about are alliances indeed amongst democracies. You’ve discussed the putting in broadening these alliances and not necessarily in a cold war sense, but certainly nations with mutually aligned interests working together. But are you confident that democracies can prevail against autocracies? Because a lot of people when you look at arguably the way perhaps China’s handled COVID, versus perhaps more challenging way it’s been dealt within European Nations, United Kingdom and US. How do you see that challenge?

Luke de Pulford:

Well, I think democracies can and will prevail on the basis that the market based system is far more responsive to them. The free flow of information, the notion of trust and of relative independence from the government are really essential commercial tools. And when you remove those, it doesn’t work that well. I think for that reason alone, quite apart from the fact that people prefer freedom, is one of the reasons that even the so-called might of the Chinese Communist Party is no match for it. And you can see this, they’ve attempted to create their own financial centers outside of Hong Kong, and really struggled. Why? Because they lack the core ingredients for a successful market flow. It’s just, I can’t see it happening for them in a much broader sense.

Luke de Pulford:

And it’s why that they’ve taken the strategic tech they have in terms of expanding their power. Now I think things will probably get a little bit worse before they get better with the current situation. But they can’t continue forever. It’s a bit difficult thing to predict in the context of the CCP, just because it’s very closed and it’s messy. And my read of it is that, the decisions which are being made at the top level of the CCP strategic decisions, but especially diplomatic decisions, are more and more wrong-headed. Which is quite typical if you look at the history of authoritarianism quite typical of a pattern whereby the worst things seem to get the smaller the circle of advisors gets in the worst of mistakes. That’s where we are with the CCP right now. Now, I’m not predicting that the thing will die anytime soon. But it is not in a healthy place.

Misha Zelinsky:

And a lot of analysts say, when you look at the regime of Xi Jinping, a lot of it’s driven by paranoia. Firstly, the paranoia of how his family was removed originally, and then the way he was pushed right to the fringe. That he deeply understands what it is to be removed from power. And so that paranoia drives so much of the decision making. But what is interesting, not withstanding all the troubles we’ve seen in the United States for the last four years, that China has driven so many native its neighboring nations and nations around the world back into, I suppose, not the arms of the Americans, but certainly wanting to deepen alliances. Which is quite instructive really, when you look at the behaviors being counterproductive notwithstanding how concerning it is.

Luke de Pulford:

Yeah. Very much so. And I mean, the best example of this is fact that they managed to destroy, or at least put on ice their comprehensive investment agreement deal with the EU. Which Germany had pushed for like hell they pushed so hard for that. They couldn’t have pushed harder. They rammed it through at the last minute. And the European Parliament, we’re going to have to go along with it. Well, they’ve somehow managed to unite the entire European parliament against them who have just voted through resolution saying, “This thing isn’t going to happen until you lift the sanctions.” Well, I mean, that’s a profound act of self-harm from China, which can only have occurred within the context that you set out. So for those reasons and many more, it’s not going to be around forever. And I am one of those people who are not that backward about being forward about saying that that party regime is a bad thing and the sooner it’s gone the better.

Misha Zelinsky:

And do you hold out hope for… I mean, there was always this the thesis, China will get rich and then it will become democratic. And then a lot of people have subsequently… Some people hanging on to that thesis, but increasingly people are being persuaded by the behavior and the evidence. But do you believe, I mean, some people will also argue in that context that Asian societies or Confucian societies don’t want democracy or have no history of democracy. They’re more comfortable in more centralized governing or totalitarian type regimes. Do you accept that, firstly, and then do you think that democracy in China is possible?

Luke de Pulford:

Oh, it’s certainly possible. And that’s one of the reasons that Taiwan is so viciously hated because it’s a clear example. Now, I would with the conversation slightly different. I want to frame it slightly differently. If you look at the things that Xi Jinping said, it’s quite that, that tendency towards opening up and democracy, but also to human rights is not completely alien to the people of China. Some of the people who played a part in the draftsmanship of the Universal Declaration of Human Right were Chinese drafters. This is often forgotten about. So we need to be careful of playing too much into the narrative that there is a Confucian or ethnocentric value system, which is going to project something new upon the world which will bring about a more stable and successful civilization. Because that is just a part of that nationalistic narrative.

Luke de Pulford:

It’s not actually true. And the history of China is way more complex than that, with lots of different tracks strands of thinking. What I would say is that the human rights project, and this is why we have to wake up and smell the coffee. The Human Rights Project, the principles of universality around individual human dignity and everything that flows from those. They were tolerance, all of the principles that undergirds the Universal Declaration and then the Principle Human Rights Instruments of the UN, they were forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust because people didn’t want that to happen again. And they were very, very hard one. What we see now is a Chinese Communist Party, which wants to remake the hierarchy of rights. You very explicitly stated with economic and social rights at the top, and the sort of fundamental inalienable rights that we talk about, are which were supposed to be about the founding purposes of the whole bloody thing at further down the hierarchy subjugated to economic and social rights and security, that kind of stuff.

Luke de Pulford:

And rights to security, terrifying things, which through the lens through which they would justify what they’re doing in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Now, as Trump has retreated from the UN and a number of other nations, rather than engaging in realizing, “This is our common project, the genie’s out of the bottle here, and we’ve got to protect this thing. These custodian institutions for what we believe.” That vacuum has been filled by the CCP. And they are very successfully undermining that institution and changing into something else. We must not make the mistake of saying that the thing they’re trying to change it into is more compatible with Chinese people. I think that’s false. I think it is more compatible with a particular ideology pursued by this particular government, which wouldn’t have even been pursued 15, 20 years ago by Chinese government. So let’s be really careful and nuanced about that narrative I think. And distinguished as much as we possibly can, but also advocate for people waking up. Because use it or lose it, the UN it’s well on the way out.

Misha Zelinsky:

So I’m curious, I mean, you’ve talked about the UN, that you’ve still got hope for it or not to say it’s quixotic. But what we’re seeing more of, is what is so-called minilateralism where you see things like the quad where India, Japan, Australia, and the United States, or perhaps there’s talk of a D-10 where you have the democratic nations of the G7 there. Do you still favor going through the, I suppose, the core multilateral institutions not withstanding their dysfunction?

Luke de Pulford:

We need both, but we need to be very wary of creating lots of many UN 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. The reason being that the genius out of the bottle with the UN. We’ve created a huge multilateral institution with huge power and huge legitimacy. And if we retreat from that, it’ll just be remade in a slightly different image and an image which isn’t faithful to its founding purposes. That is what’s happening at the moment. So I wouldn’t say let’s not do these smaller things. I think we should, but we shouldn’t do them to the detriment of the UN. And we certainly shouldn’t let them be an excuse for a treat from the UN.

Misha Zelinsky:

And so just one last question before we get to the trademark final, a hokey question of this show. But we talked about, verifiable things out of Xinjiang about what’s happening there, but you’re someone that obviously is anchored. In fact. How do we promote… This challenge between, and again, it’s principally between authoritarian and totalitarian states, but it’s also exists within Western discourses about misinformation, counter narratives and the ability to discern what’s true and what is not. And COVID is a great example where China has been desperately trying to put out counter narratives about what’s happening. And you’re seeing even in Europe with Russian misinformation campaigns relating to vaccine hesitancy. How do we actually promote that? And how do we secure ourselves against misinformation campaigns in that sense?

Luke de Pulford:

Honestly, I think it’s extremely difficult. I don’t have the answers to it. And then it manifests in so many ways. So for example, right now there’s a bit of a row going on within the Uyghur community about a couple of testimonies that came out which are exaggerated. Now, apart from being a bit of a gift to the Chinese Communist Party, part of the problem is that, there’s this huge onus on journalists and the people reporting this stuff to do you do what they can in terms of verification. And it is extremely difficult for all reasons to tell the difference between, not just fact and fiction, but fact and then a little bit of embellishment. Which is often what you’re dealing with. Now, that’s just in microcosm a problem within the wider community. When you start talking about broader disinformation, like the kind of disinformation which has been pumped into Taiwan recently, how do you deal with that kind of thing?

Luke de Pulford:

I don’t think that we’ve got a very coherent plan for you all, to be honest. Luckily, I would say that right now from the stuff that I see, is not really sophisticated enough in the West to claim many hearts or minds. And you’ve probably seen this phenomenon with a load of Westerners who get paid money presumably, I don’t know where from. But it’s got to originate with the Chinese government somewhere to make apologetic videos about what’s happening in China and how great China is. I mean, it’s just not persuasive. It does not persuade anyone as far as I’m aware. And if it does, I’d be really surprised, and load of inflated viewing figures and likes. None of it’s particularly real, but it will get more sophisticated. So I’m not answering your question particularly well-

Misha Zelinsky:

And the Russians are much better at it than the CCP, right? They’re far more sophisticated in their PSYOPs. I mean, I’m not suggesting you have the answer, but I guess I’m more curious about how much does it undermine the work you do specifically. Because, as you said, you’ve got this challenge where you’re trying to verify things, but then actively being undermined at the same time. And when everything’s true, and I think it’s true. And that’s the aim, right? Of these regimes.

Luke de Pulford:

I would say, I don’t think it’s got to that level of sophistication certainly in the UK yet as far as I’ve seen. The bigger threat is the threat from within, which comes from people who have predicated their entire careers on being nice to China or this idea that China is going to open up. I’m not trying to say that these people, they’re not bad people. And there are a lot of people mainstream folk who believed that that would happen. The difficulty is that quite a number of people in positions of power now are really hit to that wagon, and they won’t let go. So they’re the people talking about the needs to have a more nuanced relationship with China, not to view everything through the prism of human rights, this kind of stuff.

Luke de Pulford:

You can’t have a bilateral relationship which is just about human rights. This is the argument they’re trying to mount now, and it’ll have some traction. And they’re more of a threat because what they do is, they absolve the UK or other nations from having to act. They give them a reason not to, and at the same time as diminishing the scale of the consent. So what you will find in the UK is that the guys who talk about nuance are also the most skeptical about the evidence. So I think different disinformation plays into that a little bit, for sure. But I actually believe that we harm ourselves way more than the disinformation campaigns are harming us.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well. And that’s a really great place too. I mean, I think you and I can talk about this for it a long time. But I’m going to have to let you get on with your day. But I can’t let you go without answering the textbook question I ask every guest here, which is the Diplomates barbecue question. Now, I’m sure you’re a little bit horrified at this prospect as a poem, but as a foreign guest, you have to invite three Ozzies. So three convicts from the Antipodes. So barbecue at Luke’s – who are they and why?

Luke de Pulford:

First of all, let me clarify it. Can they be dead?

Misha Zelinsky:

Yeah. If that makes you happier than they can absolutely be dead, man.

Luke de Pulford:

So my first and this is very sincere because this is one of the people I admire most in Australian history. But not just in Australia history, but anywhere. I’m going to go with Saint Mary MacKillop. Now, I don’t know if this is a name that means much to you, but-

Misha Zelinsky:

It does actually. Yeah.

Luke de Pulford:

Incredible woman who founded the Joseph order. He was a bee in the bonnet of anybody who tried to hold her under authority. Remarkably entrepreneurial woman who gave her life to those who were suffering. I think she’s amazing. And the Ozzie should make more of a noise about her in my view. 19th century, Australian Saint canonized in 2010 when I was living in Rome. So yeah, I’m a fan. Now the next, I was joking about this. But I thought I know barbecue is complete without being an argument. And I would love to sit down this controversial guy, Jeff Robbie. You know this guy?

Misha Zelinsky:

Oh, Yeah. Robbie, the former ambassador. Oh mate, you guys would get on like a house on fire. He’s a noted China dove if we can put it in those terms.

Luke de Pulford:

Absolutely. But I think I found it very interesting that when China was retaliating against Australia by imposing ridiculous tariffs on your wine, his white line of wine because he’s also an entrepreneur and has his own vineyards, was one of the lines that didn’t suffer. He unfortunately didn’t have very heavy tariffs placed upon him, and I leave it to any-

Misha Zelinsky:

And now its just a coincidence, mate. I’m sure those are just-

Luke de Pulford:

That’s the coincidence. But I quite like to have an argument with a guy-

Misha Zelinsky:

Maybe some wines, no doubt. But he can bring it.

Luke de Pulford:

Not some of his wine, I don’t think I’ve heard bad things. And then finally, this was a toss up between Nick Cavan and Kim Kitchen. But I’m going to at the risk of seeming as if I’m brown nosing one of my co-chairs. I just think Kim kitchen is a lovely person. And I’d love to have a barbecue with her, which I haven’t been able to do yet.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, I know Kim very well. She’s a listener of the show. So I’m especially to go to thrill. But yeah, a senator and does a lot of good work and she’s actually been pushing one of important action around acknowledgement the atrocities occurring in Xinjiang. So you’ve got a site, a former ambassador such a wine entrepreneur and an Ozzy Labor Senator, mate. So it’s a good mix, no doubt.

Luke de Pulford:

Barbecues of mine are always a great laugh, as you can see.

Misha Zelinsky:

Well, mate, Luke, thanks so much for coming on. Congratulations on all the work you’ve been doing to date and keep it up and we’ll hope to stay in touch.

Luke de Pulford:

Pleasure is all to me. Thank you very much.