Graham's blog Friday 28 November 2008

Published on Fri 28th Nov 2008

Under a recent change to the organisation of our Parliament's work, four or five individual weeks every year have been set aside as weeks in which no committee meetings are scheduled, so that MEPs can travel beyond the EU without disrupting committee work. This past week was one such; among those travelling were a delegation from the EP's international trade committee, to India. They were unfortunate to be in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai when a terror attack left over 100 dead and 900 injured; and very lucky not to be among those in either category. My Liberal Democrat colleague Ignasi Guardans from Spain was on the trip, sitting outside on a terrace when the terrorists struck; a former colleague, now Tory MEP Sajjad Karim was in the lobby when the shooting started. Another British Tory and a German Social Democrat were led to safety through the kitchens.

I was leading a delegation of five of my Liberal Democrat colleagues to Taipei and Tokyo when the news came through. It gave us a good opportunity to stress to the Japanese how we need their active assistance in fighting terrorism.

In Taipei we met the new President, Ma Ying-jeou, who defeated his Liberal predecessor Chen Shui-bian in March. Our sister party the DPP is in bad shape, having lost January's parliamentary elections heavily before losing the Presidency. But their new Leader is former deputy prime minister Tsai Ing-wen, an impressive lady who I think is probably the right person to pull them together again. I was certainly impressed by the clarity of her thinking.

I also visited education minister Wu Mu-lin to learn how he evaluates the Chinese language teaching scheme in SW schools which I set up with his predecessor. He seems happy with progress and looked forward to the scheme's further development. I hope to recruit another six secondary schools next year and continue with the current nine so that we will have fifteen assistants altogether.

Taiwan remains a thriving democracy with a remarkably successful economy. Under the new President they have signed deals with the People's Republic of China to allow many more direct flights and ferry services and to provide for better exchange of information on things like tainted food in the wake of the melamine-poisoned baby milk powder scandal.

While we were in Taiwan, China decided to cancel at short notice a forthcoming summit with the EU. The reason given was President Sarkozy's willingness to meet the Dalai Lama at a prizegiving ceremony for Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. I suspect the European Parliament's recent decision to award its freedom prize (at the suggestion of my Group) to Hu Jia, a Beijing lawyer who has the temerity to defend dissidents, also contributed. The People's Republic of China remains one of the few communist autocracies in the world and their thinking in these matters has hardly developed in the twenty years since their troops fired on their own students in Tiananmen Square. They still believe they can bully their way across the world stage.

In Japan we found another confirmed democracy, though one party, the so-called Liberal Democrats, has been in power almost continuously for over 50 years. Our sister party, the Democratic Party of Japan, took control of the Upper House earlier this year and looks likely to gain a majority in the Lower House at the next General Election, which must be held before September 2009. We met leading figures from both parties plus the Foreign Minister, the deputy Finance Minister and the Environment Minister, who is also the leader of the junior coalition partner New Komeito (Buddhist) party.

On Wednesday morning, before leaving for Tokyo, I delivered a lecture to students at Chengchi University's Department for Diplomatic Studies. I spoke from notes drawn up in the wee small hours of that morning on the topic 'Supranational responses to supranational challenges'; and remarkably it came out fluently. The text will be posted on my website once it has been transcribed from an audio and video recording.

Japan's main concern at present is the greying of their population. Population numbers have started to drop and this process is expected to accelerate; they are interested in studying the French system of childcare since there are no state-run nurseries or crèches in Japan. Perhaps the more serious long-term challenge, however, is their failure to admit to guilt and to apologise for war time atrocities against their neighbours. While they are rightly concerned about twelve citizens who were kidnapped by North Korea back in the 70s and 80s, they have failed to deal properly with the issue of the many Koreans taken into sexual slavery as 'comfort women' by Japan during the war.

I flew back into Heatrow from Tokyo this afternoon and am now on my way to a LibDem constituency supper in Bath. Tomorrow I attend a LD coffee morning in Wedmore in Wells constituency. Next week I shall be back in Brussels. And Rome. And Prague. Late autumn is an extremely busy time of year, especially with European Parliament elections in the offing.