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The Taoiseach [Irish prime minister] cannot have been unimpressed by China’s infrastructure, which is evidence of how far it has come in the world. The reason the Chinese became so good at building is because they put engineers in charge, while in the West we put lawyers in the driver’s seat.
So where does Ireland fit into this? Why would China even bother with us, much less roll out the red carpet the way it did?
The answer seems to be that it is working one by one on what it considers to be malleable EU member states.
Relations between China and the EU itself are regarded as frosty, because of disputes over trade, human rights and Ukraine.
The EU has a huge trade imbalance with China and believes Beijing is undermining the European car industry by dumping huge numbers of cheaply produced, but increasingly high-quality cars (see BYDs, for example) on our markets.
China is a serial human rights abuser, and this has become worse under Xi. It is also a Russian ally that refuses to sanction Moscow or force it to the negotiation table with Ukraine.
Instead, it is content to see Western energies absorbed in that war.
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Last July, there was a China-EU summit in Beijing which the Atlantic Council, a prestigious think tank, said neither side really wanted. It was originally set for Brussels, but Xi refused to go — so it was moved to Beijing instead and cut from two days to one. The event was described as tense.
Against this background, it makes sense for China to work on EU member states individually.
One of those is Hungary, the EU’s perennial “bad boy” under Viktor Orban. Another appears to be the EU’s perennial “good boy” — and that’s us. Martin was in China with one mission in mind: namely to improve relations and trade with Beijing.
China was never going to roll out the red carpet for us if it knew in advance we would challenge it in any real way over its human rights record. The Irish practice on these occasions is to mention human rights in a quiet way, and then move swiftly along, and so it proved on this occasion.
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On the website of the [Irish] Department of Foreign Affairs, we find the bald and unambiguous statement: “Respect for human rights and the promotion of human rights is a cornerstone of Irish foreign policy.” Is it really?
Xi has presided over the jailing of dissidents, the crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the brutal suppression of the Uyghur Muslims, the continuing oppression of Tibet, and a vast surveillance network that monitors almost every activity of ordinary Chinese people.
Martin knows all this, as does every politician here worth their salt. But aside from an excellent article in this newspaper last Sunday by Fianna Fáil’s Malcolm Byrne, there was almost no political pressure on Martin to make a real issue of China’s human rights record — whereas we are very noisy about Donald Trump and Israel.
Is this explained by the fact that most politicians never think about China from one end of the day to the other, or perhaps that some on the left see China as part of an anti-Western, “anti-imperialist” front, and therefore to be looked upon sympathetically?
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Oddly enough, when Martin met Xi, the Chinese leader mentioned reading The Gadfly, a book by the Irish-born Ethel Voynich. It is about a revolutionary who stands up to the authorities of his day.
It was a massive bestseller in the Soviet Union and China years ago. Who knew?
Well, as Cónal Thomas pointed out in the Irish Independent on Tuesday, China’s leaders understood perfectly well that Martin is no gadfly. He is anything but.
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