As tensions between the United States and China escalate, most recently over tariffs, but also over issues of human rights, forced labor, national security, and global trade, a growing coalition of lawmakers and activists is pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party. The coalition includes Luke de Pulford, founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a cross-party initiative launched in 2020 that now spans legislatures across the democratic world.
De Pulford spoke with Federal Newswire about what he sees as a mounting international consensus that the CCP’s authoritarian reach is a direct challenge to the values and security interests of democratic nations, especially the United States. His concern led him to co-found his group with lawmakers from eight legislatures.
De Pulford serves on the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and advises the World Uyghur Congress. His focus on human rights and anti-slavery efforts started young. “I had said at the age of eight that I wanted to work to try to do something about slavery,” he says.
He lived in Lesotho while his father, a British civil servant, worked on reforming the local police force. The experience, combined with his later immersion in Catholic social teaching while training for the priesthood in Rome, gave de Pulford an enduring ideological grounding.
De Pulford says his awakening to China’s authoritarianism came through personal relationships. “My commitment to the Hong Kong thing was always strongly ideological, but it became very personal because so many of my friends ended up being arrested,” he says. This included Andy Lee, a former volunteer for IPAC. “He tried to escape Hong Kong with 11 others… was apprehended in Chinese waters… taken to Shenzhen prison in China, and it was reported by the Washington Post he was tortured there.”
IPAC resulted primarily from concerns about slavery in China. “In the northwest of China… we were dealing with the largest example of state imposed forced labor anywhere in the world,” he recalls, “but almost nobody at that stage in the anti-slavery community of NGOs was speaking about it.”
De Pulford attributes the silence to the influence of philanthropic interests connected to China’s supply chains. IPAC was formed to act where others wouldn’t. “The idea was… a cross-party coalition of legislators in as many countries as we can get, to be able to push their own governments on China.”
IPAC’s bias for action has yielded results, such as coordinated genocide recognition motions in 12 parliaments regarding Uyghur forced labor. Still, the organization must walk a tightrope. “The easy area for consensus is human rights… but when you start talking about military and defense cooperation around Taiwan, you’re going to lose a good proportion of your network.”
De Pulford is candid about the slow pace of governmental change outside the U.S. “Our businesses still don’t get it…throughout Europe, Germany has hedged so substantially on the Chinese market that whole swathes of its industry cannot operate without the trading relationship.”
He notes that while Parliament in the UK is nearly united on the China threat, “the government’s gone backwards and is trying to behave as if the last seven years of aggression… never happened.”
Asked whether Xi Jinping’s leadership has been the catalyst for global reevaluation of China policy, de Pulford doesn’t hesitate: “Yes, definitely…I have been consistently surprised by Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party’s appetite for self-harm.”
He points to Beijing’s overreaction to IPAC-led efforts on Uyghur recognition, which led to sanctions on European parliamentarians and ultimately torpedoed a massive trade agreement between China and the EU. “Xi Jinping saw off his own trade deal with the EU as a result of that kind of very poor decision making,” he says.
Another issue that illustrates China’s growing global influence is a controversial embassy project in London. De Pulford has helped organize mass protests against the proposed compound, citing national security concerns. “It would be the largest embassy in Europe with space for 238 PRC state employees to live there… Not only that, it’s in a site of great historic importance, directly opposite the Tower of London.”
Even more alarming, the embassy would sit atop key internet cabling feeding London’s financial services sector—also vital to U.S. interests. “It blows my mind that we’re even considering it,” de Pulford says.
IPAC supports lawmakers around the world who confront China’s overreach. “What they get for it in return is to be sanctioned, to be badly treated by their own parties,” de Pulford says.
