China’s growing international importance means it must become more diplomatically engaged in world affairs and should make its rulers more accountable to their people, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, told China’s future leaders at Beijing’s prestigious Central Party School.

In a carefully modulated speech that pulled no punches, the Foreign Secretary left her audience from the Communist Party’s young elite in no doubt of Britain’s concern that suppression of dissenting views was more likely than tolerance of opposition to lead to the instability that China dreads.

She urged China to expand freedom of information and government accountability – changes that would bring stability. She said: “Any healthy economy needs journalists and individuals who are free to point out problems without fear of reprisal.” Her words may not find favour with China’s current leadership who have not hesitated in recent years to show their impatience with dissent.

The Communist leadership has tightened its grip on the media, issuing new rules to silence even hints of critical reporting in the run-up to the crucial five-yearly party congress in the autumn. Several aggressive reporters and editors have been sacked, arrested or even jailed in recent years. The internet, in particular, is a source of concern to China’s rulers, who employ thousands of police to patrol Chinese cyberspace.

She referred to the need for more checks and balances where decisions on policy and personnel are taken at party meetings and where corruption among officials with the power to grant favours is rampant.

Her speech touched on one of the most sensitive topics among the leadership – the threat of civil unrest. She said: “With greater accountability of the Government – which does require greater political participation and representation, with the guarantee of independent courts, with transparency of decision making – ordinary citizens have much less need to resort to public confrontation to make their point.”

Her message was that reform of the political system could be a source of stability and not a force of fragmentation. It is a message her hosts are likely to have great difficulty accepting amid their fears that economic reforms could already be eroding their grip on power.

“One of the most sensitive areas of discussion for any government is legal and political reform. But while it can be tempting to see these as separate from the economic process, they are integral to it.” She tempered her remarks by saying that her suggestions were motivated by the need of the world to see continued stability in China. “It is because of the high value we all place on that stability and because of the growing stake we now have in your continued economic success.”

But the Foreign Secretary did not confine her remarks to domestic issues. She emphasised the need for China to move away from its long-held policy of noninterference and to be more diplomatically engaged with the rest of the world and to exert its influence in dealing with global problems – such as those in Africa.

She said: “I know that outside interest in China’s domestic affairs will always be a sensitive issue. So let me make it plain: in a globalising world of interdependent states, the success of China is good for the world, and its failure would harm us all.”

On Africa, where Beijing has faced criticism from the United States and Europe for its close ties with Sudan and Zimbabwe, Mrs Beckett said that China had a vital role to play because of its growing investment in the continent. “This gives China the opportunity to wield influence in Africa in support of vital and shared goals: promoting sustainable development; improving governance and reducing poverty; promoting transparent business practices.”

Mrs Beckett is to hold talks with Yang Jiechi, her newly appointed Chinese counterpart, and to meet Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister, in Beijing today.

Dissent danger

—The journalist Shi Tao posted online instructions for the media on how to cover the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was jailed for ten years for leaking “state secrets”

—Hou Wenzhuo, director of an organisation that investigated land grabs, was forced to flee China last year after being harassed

—Chen Guangcheng tried to sue Shangdong province last year for imposing birth quotas through forced sterilisation and abortion. He was beaten and put under house arrest

Source: Amnesty International, Times archives

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