What is the human cost to China's economic miracle? | Head to Head

over the last four decades china's economic boom has lifted millions out of poverty and set the country on a path to become the world's largest economy we observe an incredible rebalancing of the chinese economy at a faster pace than anyone else but since president xi jinping came to power in 2013 critics say china has become even more autocratic he's tried to curb corruption but has also cracked down on his rivals and invested billions in a bigger stronger military reflecting a more aggressive foreign policy at home up to a million muslim uighurs are believed to have been interned by the chinese authorities in so-called re-education centers this appears to be the most intensive social re-engineering effort of the chinese state since the cultural revolution but my guest tonight disputes all this and believes china is a force for good in the world i'm mehdi hassan and i've come here to the oxford union to go head to head with charles liu a chinese financier senior fellow at the peking university and an advisor to the chinese government i'll challenge him on china's human rights record and ask him is china's economic miracle sustainable and what on earth is going on with the uyghurs [Music] tonight i'll also be joined by three experts steve sang director of the china institute at the school of oriental and african studies in london andreas fulder a china expert at the university of nottingham's asia research institute and victor gao vice president of the center for china and globalization in beijing and a former interpreter for the late president deng xiaoping [Applause] ladies and gentlemen please welcome charles liu liu is the founder and chairman of investment company how capital and a regular tv commentator on chinese issues charles liu thanks for joining me on head to head chinese president xi jinping whose government you've advised said last year china is ready for a bloody battle against our enemies and kicked off 2019 by ordering the people's liberation army to quote prepare for a comprehensive military struggle with who charles there's only one country that is uh sending warships into chinese territory that is uh threatening china with all kinds of things the united states the united states but whenever i hear president trump speak he says how much he loves president xi and how they're great pals but everything that he's doing all the executive orders the military budget all of this is focused on challenging china's position in the world china has one military outpost u.s has 800. it's interesting because you say the u.s has a threat and threatening china and china's reacting it's funny because the u.s uh commander on the ground in the asia pacific admiral phil davidson uh in february told the u.s senate the exact opposite he says through fear and economic pressure beijing is working to expand its form of ideology in order to bend break and replace the existing rules-based international order who's replacing rules of international order who's cracking down on wto who's left the paris climate agreement who's challenging the agreement that's reached with the iranians who it's not china i mean you can make it all about america but and i'm not here to defend trump's america but the reality is that chinese hawks independently of the us are on the ascendant in your country on 20th of december chinese rear admiral uh luo uen said the chinese navy should consider sinking two u.s aircraft carriers and killing 10 000 u.s service personnel what the united states fears the most is taking casualties we'll see how frightened america is oh i don't take these these type of comments seriously the chance of a war between the two sides is is minimal last year the chinese government announced its biggest increase in mel in military spending for three years even though you already have a defense budget which is bigger than the uk france south korea and russia combined and yet you announced the biggest increase for three years this is not just about words or when the u.s still continues to challenge as they do for entering chinese territorial waters however you look at it the total amount it is still insignificant compared to u.s it's significant but you spend more than the uk france and russia combined three nuclear powers the three nuclear powers in terms of population that's up to how many what's population got to do with your military spending you have a big population we know that what's that got to do with your military per capita spending india has a huge population they don't they spend a quarter of what you say they wish they had the money to spend more let's talk about something where it doesn't directly involve the united states the south china sea arbitration the permanent court of arbitration at the hague ruled in 2016 that chinese claims to the south china sea have no legal basis and yet the chinese continue to disregard that ruling china is claiming more and more land more and more resources building more of these artificial islands i think seven so far malaysia vietnam indonesia brunei the philippines they've all been upset with chinese behavior in the south china sea with china taking these reefs all the discussion about south china sea has been so-called freedom of navigation when was it last time that you've seen a blockage of freedom of navigation and when was the last time you heard the countries you've named including vietnam raised an issue on china and south china sea it's only your friends americans and australians who are jumping up and down all over this it's interesting to say that because in 2018 a bunch of asian countries mainly your neighbors were asked would it be better to have uh for the world to have the us or china as the leading global power 73 percent of asian respondents including japan south korea the philippines indonesia favored the us versus 12 percent for china even with trump as president 77 of filipinos say they prefer u.s leading the world to beijing that's pretty damning to pick trump over china that's pretty damning i would argue that is but but in practical terms i don't see these countries in terms of their foreign policy and their governments addressing the chinese as a pure poll uh would seem to indicate let's bring in our panel here to see what they think about this so far andreas fulder is a german academic a china expert at the university of nottingham's asia research institute andreas should china's neighbors and the wider world be worried about this chinese military build up this increase in spending yeah i think they should and the truth of the matter is if when xi jinping talks about china's national rejuvenation it is worrisome because the underlying tenets are a radical revisionist and expansionist foreign policy as evident from the artificial reefs in the south china sea but also his threat of annexing taiwan which is a liberal democracy a very vibrant society just uh opposite the coast of mainland china and what i think his game plan is uh to project uh his power abroad to shore up his support at home charles just deal with andreas a specific point about taiwan you were born in taiwan of course if you still lived in taipei today in the taiwanese capital wouldn't you be worried at some of the rhetoric coming out of beijing about annex i wouldn't be at all well not because i actually went would it take to worry no i went to taipei for the midterm elections what i see in taipei or in taiwan today is the people in taiwan have gotten fed up with so-called independence politics they're looking for better life well why is it 170 000 engineers have left taiwan and have gone to shenzhen why is it all the 90 of the startups in taiwan are aimed at the chinese market and not the taiwanese market i think the fact that the economies have become so integrated between taiwan and china it leads to let's say the possibility of addressing the issue but my impression is that the young taiwanese are actually quite worried that they may actually lose out in this process and also lose their de facto sovereignty as a liberal democratic island state but that is no longer considered the primary issue even for the younger people okay let me bring in steve sang who's a british political scientist born in hong kong currently director of the china institute at the school of oriental and african studies in london uh steve is this a new form of aggressive foreign policy in china's or is that just an exaggeration on the part of china's enemies what is china trying to do with its foreign policy is it trying to change the region change the world after xi jinping become leader of china what we are seeing is an assertive foreign policy that essentially amongst to china now requests and requires the rest of the world to pay china due respect and what amongst due respect is something to be judged by the communist party of china or in effect by the leader of china general secretary of communist party xi jinping okay uh we've also got viktor gao with us one of china's best known international politics experts vice president at the center for china and globalization in beijing former interpreter for the late president deng xiaoping you can't deny that the current chinese president is taking different steps as previous is demanding respect on the regional and international stage china doesn't want to challenge the international order today but china wants to have a better say a larger say in the international order today and i hope the rest of the world will respect china's request because this is legitimate this is legal this is not revolutionary means to overthrow the international in the south china sea there's a debate about legality stephen you're smiling there when they just said they don't well china is not out there to change the international system as we know it at the moment but it is transforming it when the u.n agency for human rights was being changed and then china played a leading role in the transformation the creation of the human rights council and as it does so it basically changes the discussions at the u.n about human rights now china is not at much of the receiving end of criticism on human rights charles let me ask you this one of the reasons so many people are broader worried about chinese foreign and defense policies right now is because you have a president who at home appears to be bent on increasing his own power and reach chinese president since mao as you know tended to serve five or ten years in office but president xi has cracked down on his rivals refused to designate a successor and last year got rid of term limits he's gearing up to be president for life isn't he dictator in chief okay two things number one it's a one-party system and thank god the key issue for the chinese government is that they tried very hard over the years to maintain stability you're claiming this president for life thing is precisely you don't understand how the system works okay explain it now take hojin tower for example doing his second turn was seen as lame duck for the entire second term and he couldn't implement or execute a lot of things that he wanted to execute it doesn't mean that he's actually going to continue for another term but that prospect would take out the possibility of being regarded as lame duck but it does give him the option to serve for life legally with the immediate system if it goes in that direction he does seem to be going in that direction not necessarily okay quick question though on the vote last year in march that was the vote in the national people's congress to get rid of term limits the delegates voted 2 964 of them voted two of them voted against 2959 voted in favor was that a free and fair election i'm just wondering too i mean 2900 people just voted the way he wanted coincidence no he was our chinese politics works apparently that's how it works okay good to hear such an endorsement of the system um i think you should not be addressing the chinese entire system of how it works in comparison to what you have in the west you have to remember that 50 years ago 90 of the population were illiterate only 10 percent was literate or sophisticated or educated the whole process of transforming that into a modern society is it's taken a long time um by the way lots of chinese people weren't happy with the two term limits and they took to uh weibo and other online forums and they were not allowed to in fact the chinese government disallowed the words personality cult my emperor to term limit emperor she they were all not allowed to use those words online to avoid people's dissatisfaction with this move is just you you read weber i don't read weber but others who read it for me okay now they are comments their views and comments describing their views and comments on on this issue they got shut down it's not true it got shut down because i can i i wrote something on this as well well you wrote something critical of president xi and huevo absolutely oh wow what did you write i said this would not be regarded well by the western press that's your definition of a criticism of the chinese president nicely done charles we've got to move on time is short we want to talk about the economy in part two before we do there's another big domestic issue that's grabbed a lot of headlines in recent months um your country the government you support and have advised according to a u.n rapporteur according to the u.s state department according to amnesty international according to human rights watch according to plenty of journalists and many others are believed to have detained maybe a million people or more mainly from the uyghur muslim ethnic minority in re-education camps a million people charles a million okay it's certainly not grabbing headlines in china isn't that because you don't have a free press in china so you can't have headlines about the uyghurs no it's because are 55 national minorities in china and uighur's population is in total 9 and 10 million i believe in xinjiang yes 0. 0.7 but the world doesn't work on percentages if you lock up a million the world doesn't the world pays attention 1.4 billion people need to be fed need to be closed i've got two million million people in xinjiang that must concern you to hear that a million people of your fellow chinese country men and women have been locked if it's true sure how do we establish if it's true or not why don't you let people in to check and count then we'll know for sure i think people have visited no they've been on kind of supervised trips with chinese monitors to select camps where they haven't been able to see everything in fact reuters went on a trip last year they were taken around they were allowed to meet some people and the people sang if you're happy and you know it clap your hands and chinese government monitors stood in the room the whole time and no one was allowed to speak to anyone independent well you know charles there are people who've been in those camps who have come out of those camps and now refugees in the us in kazakhstan and they have testified to hooding shackling torture sleep deprivation sexual humiliation starvation this is what's coming out from people who've been in those camps in xinjiang if it's true then they're certainly very bad this is not my area of expertise and i'm not involved in the politics and i've never been to xinjiang i'm more concerned about the economic side well let me bring in victor gao who is a very well-known chinese political commentator even chinese government officials have admitted that there are these camps there are people locked up for quote-unquote re-education but in the most horrific conditions and we're talking up to a million people victor how can you justify that the wiggle people are our brothers and sisters i have many friends among the lego people among the muslim people in china they are minority most of them are great chinese nationals that's for sure however among the uh muslims there are extremists there are terrorists and there are separatists separatists which want to who want to split xinjiang away from china in china under the chinese law anyone attempting to separate any part of chinese territory outside of china is committing a crime we need to be fully aware of this legal issue we cannot tolerate anyone we're denying that have been caught up in international terrorism no one's denying that i'm wondering why not lock them up why lock up a million people first of all all together in xinjiang there is less than 10 million legal people if you are really serious in believing that there is a one million people among the wiggles who are locked up in so-called caps this is completely fabricated how many people are locked up i do not know you can't say it's not a million if you don't have an alternative number there are several things one is the definition of one million or less than one billion that's one thing the other one is locked up well they're not there of their own volition are they no there are people in xinjiang who are going through training or retraining for education purposes there are people in educational purposes kairat samakan who was one of the people who managed to get out of a camp he says we were forced to sing political songs and study speeches of the chinese communist party we were forced to chant long live xi jinping before we were given our meals many of us have tried to attempt suicide allow me to say one thing for sure no one in china is saying long live xi jinping so whatever report you are quoting is false to start with here's what i don't get victor the u.n amnesty international human rights watch the u.s state department various uh china experts human rights activists have come up with this number of a million based on satellite photography based on people who have come out and talked about it you're saying it's not a million i'm asking very simply how many is it i think we need to just differentiate the realities on the ground versus the falsify the claims so refugees weaker refugees have talked about being tortured in camps they're just making it up according to you i think lots of these claims are falsified and you're a friend of the weaker people okay andreas fulder what do you make of victor's response and charles's responses so far i think it's you know both what uh charles and victor said is indefensible and let me explain for a lot of people who support the chinese communist party cultural difference has to be dealt with by homogenization and assimilation but let me give a human face to these people there is a pop singer he's famous for a song where he's encouraging young people to study hard to do physical exercise and to be courteous he is not a terrorist victor or a second example there is another gentleman he was very promising footballer because he traveled abroad he was deemed a potential terrorist he's in a camp he's not a terrorist and the last but not least and it's very really important the peace activist ilham toti very widely respected individual he has always advocated that the predominantly han chinese should get along with the weakers and vice versa he was locked up for life for this kind of moderate advocacy on behalf of its own people so i would say these three individuals need to be released immediately the one million weakers and kazakhs need to be released immediately there is no justification to bring so much harm to them and their families they should be able to live in peace and free from fear victor what's your response to that and charles you wanted to come in do you know how many legal fighters are fighting definitely not a millionaire five thousand people so why not those five thousand people legal fighter fighting in syria has about three or four persons in their family fighting together how does five thousand fighters go over to syria come on charles every country has had problems with fighters going out to syria france has endured far more terrorist attacks than china wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait not locked up a million muslims in france 5 000 and how did they get there there's a support group same in france charles and the french have not locked up a million people they have a problem the french claim they have a problem radicalization they've brought in a state of emergency but they haven't detained a million people but even the french haven't said you can't name your son muhammad you can't have children entering mosques government employees can't fast during ramadan you can't grow quote abnormally long that's what beijing has banned we get people from doing that's false how about children not being allowed to go into mosques that's totally false why is it false how do you know it's false because i've seen the photos of them of the signs there are photos i have a neighbor next immediate next-door neighbor uh who is muslim and who goes to mosque with his children in beijing yeah he's not in shinjuku i don't you on the one hand you say don't ask me i don't know anything about this but then you jump in to say everything's fake stephen let me ask you this you're listening to charles victor saying this is propaganda what do we know what does the evidence suggest to you that you've seen that can be corroborated about what's happening in the ground on a place like xinjiang what we do note of the political system is that the communist party of china has a monopoly of the truth and the monopoly of history in china therefore what they say must be true is by definition and what anybody else has to say that does not coincide with what the party says are false news that is what we are dealing with when we are talking about one tenth of an identifiable minority in the home country being identified and put in camps how would our friends here feel if one tenth of the native population of shanghai or beijing are living in camps charles do you want to answer that i've never thought about that question okay but he's just posed it i just don't see it i don't see it happening i don't see it possible physically to spend this inordinate amount of time on something which many myself included don't feel to be truthful is i think negative propaganda on your part meta here's what i don't get on the one hand you say i don't know anything about this on the other hand you say i believe it's untruthful you can't have it both ways charles if you don't know anything about it maybe you shouldn't accuse other people of making stuff up and you and victor say it's all fake news maybe there's maybe there is some fake news there okay well on that note we're going to leave the discussion we're going to take a break we're going to come back in part two of head to head with charles liu with our panel of experts we're going to hear from our patient audience here in the oxford union we're going to talk about the chinese economic miracle and about much more welcome back to head to head on al jazeera my guest today is charles liu the financial entrepreneur and formal advisor to the chinese government undoubtedly the chinese economy has been a success story in many ways record growth millions of people lifted out of poverty i don't think anyone questions that but there are of course as you know serious concerns about the sustainability of the chinese economic miracle how long it's going to last the jobs market's got a lot tougher exports and imports have slowed down the chinese stock indexes i believe lost almost a quarter of their value last year even the trade war with the u.s seems to be taking its toll are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the chinese economic miracle i remember a book from 1998 by a top economist called the oncoming collapse of the chinese economy and that's 1998 2019 it's 20 some years ago there's been plenty of discussion about the oncoming collapse of the chinese economy and the oncoming collapse of the chinese financial system the oncoming collapse of chinese productivity i'm afraid so far it's proven that uh it's more durable the chinese economy is transforming and it's moving from cheap labor manufacturing for fortune 500 companies to a significantly meaningful domestic market and domestic consumption now 6.5 percent okay i would say to my co-investors even four percent is is quite good because the base is so much bigger now okay one thing that's been a consistent trend in china that's just been getting worse and worse over the last few decades is inequality that seems to be sparring out of control in your country there were 89 new chinese billionaires in 2018 alone that's almost two new billionaires a week while tens of millions of people still live in poverty why is a self-styled communist society producing so many billionaires and so much income inequality well i think it's the value of creation in society as a whole deng xiaoping said let some people get rich first in terms of developing milton friedman said something similar i think capitalists say the same thing too to be honest exactly trickle down economics is now the chinese it's a chinese socialist way okay it's is it trickle down or is it something much more significant according to a recent study by the european think tank brugel quote the large and persistent income gap is partly the fault of china's tax and transfer system and quote very generous personal income tax allowance and exemptions that favor high-income individuals you're a high-income individual aren't you charles however you've benefited from this tax system haven't you while other chinese haven't there are two aspects to this new tax laws have just been implemented which is supposed to be much more fair second is it's very very difficult to have a transforming society that is changing so rapidly and to have a tax system that fits in every stage of development if you look at china in the 1980s early 1990s it was basically cheap manufacturing and then it moved into something else and yet today the article one of the chinese constitution still says that the people's republic of china is a socialist state led by the working class that's just a completely false description of china today you're not led by the working class and you're not really a socialist state yeah we're certainly not a socialistism no norway and finland and sweden um we prefer to look at what happens to the economy and whether or not people's livelihoods have been improved okay well let's talk about some of the rich chinese and what they're up to the huron group very well respected research company did a survey of high net worth individuals in china rich millionaires and so and they found that almost half the number of rich chinese are planning to move away from china to protect their fortunes and to get better educations for their kids a lot of chinese billionaires millionaires as you know i mean you keep going on about the west the west a lot of the rich people in your country are obsessed with the west they buy houses in the west they send their kids to school in the west they buy western art at ridiculous prices how come it's part of investment i buy things in the west as well one in six and they wanted to move because of the political environment in china one in five said they want to protect their assets three quarters said they want their children to have a better education not a great uh vote of confidence in china from its richest people okay i have investments all over the world as well it doesn't mean that i'm moving out of china the number that you should look at is the number of students returning to china after getting education in the west of course with china vilification by the u.s a lot of chinese students are being pushed out of u.s schools i get how billionaire businessmen can send their kids abroad to study how do you explain the president of china on a 22 000 a year official salary paying for his only daughter to go to harvard how do you explain all these top polit bureau officials who were on twenty two thousand twenty three thousand dollars a year sending their kids to some of the most expensive private schools and universities how do they pay for that if you went purely by sat scores that eighty percent of the population of the uc system will be asian they happen to be better students and they get scholarships so did xi jinping's daughter get a scholarship to go to harvard i don't know i assume he could she could have because you know that his family according to a bloomberg study are found to be billionaires his brother-in-law's name appeared in the panama papers the chinese political elite is riddled with corruption as you well know and that's something that has been in the process of being addressed the last four years what does that say about your model that the chinese government has rounded up two million people communist party officials have been disciplined for corruption in recent years thank god they've been rounded up and what about the president and the politburo he seems to only arrest people who are not in his inner circle the people he likes never seem to get arrested not true really can you name an ally of the president who he's landed up recently who's an ally who's not there are politburo members who have been brought to charges well let's ask our panel andreas fulder is here china expert at the university of nottingham's asia research institute in the uk you've advised german and european authorities on engagement china you're shaking your head when charles talks about corruption how bad a problem is in china and is it being dealt with well first of all of course it's very opaque it's a dangerous topic to talk about however we know from the wikileaks and one of the cables from the us state department that the politburo standing committee is basically a cabal of business empires and these individual members control whole industries so what was alleged is that for example the now imprisoned uh securities are jo young that he basically controlled the oil industry and for example the case of the former premier wendy abao his wife she apparently liked diamonds a lot so she would control the precious gems sector now if you think about covering up the economic pie like this then thinking that this founder of amazon is the richest man in the world i think becomes a rather fanciful idea because these members in the political standing committee probably and their families are far richer than any individual outside china victor gow is with us chinese international politics expert vice president of the center for china and globalization in beijing former interpreter to the late president deng xiaoping how do you explain someone who's been around some of these people you've been in their presence where do they get all their money from if they're on 22 grand a year first of all for the record corruption in china is deeply entrenched secondly as an institution and as a policy the chinese government chinese party and the chinese people cannot tolerate corruption so whatever that's necessary to weed out corruption to write out the corrupt officials we will do and this is exactly as charles mentioned the chinese system is doing over the past five or six years in particular to be relentless in chasing after these corrupt cases chinese overseas wealth has doubled between 2012 and 2018. yeah they seem to be getting away with offshoring all their assets let me add another point however over the past 20 or 30 years property price in china in almost all the cities has gone up significantly so most of the urban citizens in china to say the least about the government officials can actually afford their kids to send their kids to the best schools in the west especially of the chinese system of family relatives pulling up funds together to support the outstanding member in china deal with andreas's point that you have the former prime minister's wife controlling the diamond industry of different politburo members controlling different sectors of the economy how is that that's socialism with the chinese characteristic that's exactly what we were talking about before uh poly bureau members were halt to task for these things i mean the thing is there was a report by the people bank of china in 2011 and they found out that since the 1990s 18 000 party officials managers of soe like big state-owned enterprise etc had fled the country and they took with them a whopping 120 billion us dollars if you think about that kind of theft of and looting of state assets if that had been invested let's say in the chinese education system or in chinese health system that would have alleviated a lot more uh poverty let me bring in uh steve sang who's been waiting patiently british political scientist born in hong kong currently the director of the china institute at the school of oriental and african studies in london how bad is the inequality problem in china right now could either of our distinguished guests from china tell us what the genie coefficient is in china this is the measure of inequality that is the measure of inequality i studied china my entire career i confess that i cannot tell you because that no such figure is available why because the chinese government don't want it to be available maybe the party has correct them but if the party has the information it's top secret it's completely classified we are not allowed to know what it is victor in china many people are not very happy about comparing their wealth to their neighbors however one thing is true among the majority of the chinese people that is if that person compares his own situation with his situation 10 years ago 20 years ago or 40 years ago everyone is better off that's the mega trend we need to keep focused on the great changes that have that's happening to everyone among the chinese people and that means every chinese inequality is a major issue you can't just dismiss it and i just want to finish steve deal with this point about uh the where this wealth comes from and how they use it to spend abroad this problem of corruption is basically systemic and the chinese government under xi jinping has done a lot to deal with corruption you quoted the two million figure overall there is also a different set of figures the so-called tiger figure tigers are basically vice minister and about ranked senior leaders in the chinese government by the western academic calculations we calculate about just below 200 tigers has been brought down the chinese state media gives figures of closer to about 700. amongst the 200 or 700 figures name three who are people who had previously worked with president xi and why is it so difficult to name even one single one charles do you want to name someone you don't know who is we know what the 200 and 700 are but but you know you you can know who they are but how do you identify who is in what camp we can look at their career the party is very good with their career structures who who had worked with president xi when he was in fujian paul your position is that people around toronto have not been locked up for corruption that's steve vision can you dispute that do you have a do you have a person that can i don't have a view on that okay let's take let's go i want to go back to something you said yeah when you said that uh uh the amount of wealth that left china in the last 10 years or something between 2012 and 2018 has doubled i believe the gdp has doubled as well there are a lot of chinese billionaires taking advantage of tax havens i'm wondering how that's okay in a socialist country supposedly uh whether you're defining socialist you know maybe how do you define socialism i think socialist is just a slogan okay in reality it's the chinese way of doing things i'm glad we agree it's just a slogan for the chinese okay let's go to the audience who've been waiting very patiently raise your hands wait for a microphone to come to you let's go to lady here thank you very much i am i have been cut off from my speaking to my family since beginning of 2017. just like many thousands of euros living overseas and my question to you mr liu does it really bother or concern you that the country that you made home after renouncing your taiwanese citizenship is criminalizing the entire euro people and implementing policies that major western news organizations lawmakers and legal scholars have described as crimes against humanity thank you first of all i have weaker friends if it's valid that there are things which are not properly done of course it's not good of course it's not good earlier you said that it was propaganda from me when you hear these stories do you realize it's probably not best just to dismiss everything as propaganda i use propaganda because you are you are abrasive aggressive way of addressing it okay sorry so it wasn't about the substance you just don't like my style okay that's fine i can live with that the substance of it is telling you what's going on she can't speak to her family i'm just asking this lady i don't know okay i don't know victims wants to jump and go on victor no for this outstanding lady i would say if you are a wego i would treat you as a brother or sister the same as i would treat the majority of the people among the lego people secondly if i can give you one piece of advice i would say several things if any of your wiggle brothers and sisters and relatives are communist party members in china then by party discipline they are not allowed to go to a mosque if they want to go to a mosque fine resign from the communist party of china so the government in china has a discipline if you are a communist party member of china don't go to a mosque go to the but it's the temple country don't go to before i go back to the audience i need to ask you a follow-up on this there are reports which haven't been really denied by the chinese government that the communist party that you talk about is sending hand chinese people to live in uyghur houses to watch them 24 7 as they eat drink pray is that fake news as well there is no problem in believing in islam i have many islamic friends okay you have weaker friends you have muslim friends i get it no however do you have people living in your house against your will no because a lot of uyghurs do right now however if anyone in china misuses islam as a pretext to split xinjiang away from china that's a crime are there people living in homes in xinjiang right now on behalf of the communist party that i'm not aware of i've never been inside the family of a legal friend unfortunately a lot of chinese communist party members have let's go back to the audience let's take the lady there in the green scarf at the back yeah you said 5000 people went to the surreal and the fight and my question to you is how did you let them to go surya to fight with such a strict barrier every 100 meters there are one checkpoints and even though people can't go on town to another town and such a strict surveillance how did you let them to go to the syria victor do you want to take that question most of these wiggle fighters now in syria and previously and currently in afghanistan have smuggled themselves out of china so in that action itself it's a violation of chinese law again there are smuggling activities bringing wiggles out of china through myanmar to malaysia for example so this is a problem not only to china but to china's neighboring countries andres folder you're here at china i just want to get your take on this this argument about terrorism is that credible argument in your view well yourself made the point that every country has to deal with extremism the question is how you do that i think this idea that you need to create this mono um a racial nation where ethnic difference is not tolerated where cultural difference is not tolerated and where religious activity is not tolerated i think this is for the lack of a better word a rabbit hole that the chinese coins party has gone in where i'm not quite sure how they can get out where the off-ramp really is because do you want to keep like a million weakers in these camps forever or the next five years or when do you release them i need to go back to the audience but very briefly victor how long how long do these camps open first of all i do not agree with the premise of your question there are more mosques being built as we speak than probably any other religious establishments in china fine let's go back to the audience this lady here in the black shirt in the second row china still has a poor social security net and working labor rights and working conditions of the poor workers are still a problem in china i want to ask how can these conditions be improved charles there is a shortfall in the social security pool there's no question one of the ways that that has been addressed has been the allocation of 10 percent of the shareholding of state-owned enterprises many of which are listed companies either in new york or hong kong or in china and to allocate that into the social security pool but isn't the problem that again came about this idea of socialism slogan or not in the beginning of the show you were telling me oh india wishes they could spend what we spend on defense but is that really something to brag about when you spend i think five percent of your gdp on health and two percent on education which is lower than what sudan spends on health and education as a proportion of money that's pretty embarrassing for a country your size absolutely your wealth calling itself socialism i think abandoning the poor people i think i think i think the health education education spending should be more in terms of hasn't it it's been increasing significantly but why is it so low in a country that claims to care about the working class it could it could be spending more sure let's take some more questions from the audience lady in the red shirt my question is do you think that the rise in populism and the economic slowdown in the west is possibly a threat to china the rise of population ultimately in a political sense is a threat to the whole world because what we have in terms of the us for example and even europe is a challenge to the rise of asia of all it's not china because if you look at the 280 components for your iphone 270 something are made in asia and assembled in china and its efficiency is enhanced because of the market size so this rise of populism in trying to move the supply chain from asia back to the united states it is a threat it's a threat to the whole world not just to china because this supply chain and this market has been very beneficial for the whole world this is how the west including the us and europe has been able to get lower cost of living lower and cheaper goods okay let's go gentlemen who was waiting with the hat i lost contact with my old families since early 2017. and i recently found out my siblings and they are in that so-called concentration camps and i don't know are they still alive or not and secondly i don't know my mother's she is well and why i'm not allowed to communicate with them and also why they not allowed my mother or my relatives to contact with me and why my mom must suffer from not seeing and hearing from their sons okay that's my question that's a statement i i have no idea about his well let me let me turn it into a question when you hear such stories aren't you concerned as a citizen of china so what might be going on in your country yes i am and when you go back to china you're going to do anything about it i'll find out more about the subject okay let's go let's go back to the audience i said at the back um personally do you believe that china's notion of human rights is fundamentally different and if so how would you define china's human rights policy okay good question i think cultural differences are there um in terms of human rights for example cultural differences and actually concrete circumstances there was a lot of complaint about the violation of human rights to force one family per child but if that policy was not implemented china would be over two billion people now who will feed them who educate them so there are concrete circumstances and very pragmatic issues that have to be addressed okay gentlemen the beard i said yep if you want to stand up and get the mic do you think it is good practice for the chinese government to have full control over the information its citizens view online do you take a sneaky peek at the rest of the internet when you're in the uk no i don't have i don't have any problems because i don't take sneaky peeks of things that i'm not interested in okay so in terms of his question should the chinese government control the flow of information decisions i think uh there should be some measure of control including in the united states total control in china that should be lessened that should be reduced you'd like to see it reduced in china yeah do you think it will be um in some in some cases it has been okay let me ask you we're out of time but i don't ask you this you were born in taiwan in capitalist society you moved to the u.s as a child you studied at nyu in princeton you worked at the un uh but in 1975 i believe you gave up your taiwanese passport and your u.s green card to become a citizen of the people's republic what made you give up all those liberties and freedoms and moved to china i felt quite oppressed in the u.s okay i participated with martin luther king in the civil rights march in 1968 wow and uh against the war in vietnam and i have one of my fellow students a princeton beaten to death by rednecks just because it was chinese and you thought china was the place to go to get more no i just thought if they don't want a chinese i'll just be chinese and you participate in the mlk's protests civil rights 1968 do you think those protests could ever happen in china um i was actually shocked at how it took 200 years for the u.s to be addressing the issue of blacks sitting on the back of buses so china's behind in the timeline you might get those protests but not right now well i hope china doesn't have to to have protest for these things to be addressed aloud the point i'm making you can't protest in china no way that's what you're avoiding no no there's there's plenty of protests in terms of even when the stock market crashed you know people were protesting charles liu we'll have to leave it there thank you so much for joining me on the show thanks to our audience here in the oxford union thanks to our panel thanks for watching thank you charles [Applause] [Music] liu you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 2,932,379

Rating: 4.5606017 out of 5

Keywords: al jazeera, charles liu, hao capital, human rights, aljazeera english, economy, al jazeera english, headtohead, mehdi hasan, aljazeera news, xi jinping, uigher, uighur, uyghur, han, han chinese, china economy, reeducation camps, head to head, Mehdi hasan, Trump, china US trade war, Beijing, Oxford Union

Id: yZs4PqKlph0

Length: 49min 12sec (2952 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Ringrosieround]

Wow. Is there more behind this? Stunning lack of defense.