Why does China think it can bully backbench MPs like me?

Does the Chinese Communist Party understand how our parliamentary democracy works? The evidence from the last 24 hours suggests not. Along with some of my Conservative colleagues in the House of Commons – Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Loughton, Tom Tugendhat and Neil O’Brien – as well as two peers, a QC and an academic, I have been banned from entering China, had any assets in China frozen (not that I have any there) and have had Chinese citizens and institutions prohibited from doing business with me. All because I have voiced well-evidenced concerns about the persecution of the Uyghur Muslim minority by the Chinese government.

The Beijing authorities, in retaliating against measures taken by the UK government on Monday over these human rights abuses, have made a serious miscalculation. Perhaps they believe that our democracy is some kind of bourgeois conceit – that MPs ultimately work for capitalist big business, who will tap the pencil and order us to be silent.