Some time ago before lockdowns I met a group of 6th form Chinese students in a local school who wanted to ask me about UK democracy and politics. They spoke good English and asked good questions to reveal some of the disputes and cross currents in our national debate. Towards the end of the class session I said it was now my turn to ask a few questions to learn something about China. They agreed. My first questions was to ask them to say what they thought of the legacy of Chairman Mao.
None of them wanted to answer and they all looked very worried about the mentioning of the name of the founder and first government leader of their ruling party. So I rephrased the question, in case the problem was my implying they might have their own views of a contentious topic. I asked them to tell me what was the official party or leadership view or line on the Mao years. I assumed they would have been primed as they were abroad as ambassadors for their country to learn more of the western system. There was still a reluctance to say anything and a refusal to endorse possible lines I proposed.
It meant I did learn something. It meant I was reminded why I dislike authoritarian systems where people are terrified to have a view, and where even the establishment cannot always supply a clear line. This is all suddenly very relevant because President Xi has just made China’s last hundred years of history a central issue which includes a crucial role for Mao in the first 55 years of communism. President Xi showed that he respects the legacy of Mao by visiting sites connected to that leader and above all by wearing a well tailored version of a Mao jacket to address his party and nation. His words were carefully crafted, pointing to the struggles of early communism where he sided by implication with Mao against the internal and external forces that opposed a communist vision of One China. He avoided directly mentioning Mao and any reference to the more contentious Great Leap Froward and Cultural revolution that Mao unleashed . He also deployed the reformists language of Deng who followed Mao, praising the achievement of creating “a moderately prosperous society in all respects” and using the phrase “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. He did however go further by reminding China that its progress is based on Marxism.
The use of Mao was presumably designed to reinforce Xi status as the unchallenged supreme leader who will get more than the customary ten year period in office of his predecessors. The ceremony was designed to reinforce the message of one people, one party, one nation, with strong references to the need to fully integrate Hong Kong and Macao, to tackle Taiwan and to see off any overseas threat to the One China vision. The anniversary celebration came over as a very defensive event lacking in flair and innovation. There were of course no jokes and no licensed criticisms or interesting reflections on China past in Xi’s speech. The fly pasts produced well organised formations but the placing had been sorted out well away from the audience and cameras. The pilots merely had to fly on a constant pre set course at a constant speed to stay together. There were to be no spectacular aerobatics or changing of shapes with the audience in view. The Politburo and other powerful supporters nervously sought to clap and look impressed at the right moments. The President looked relieved when the planes flew and the guns went off in good order without incident. The message of the speech was China now has to become “a great modern socialist country in all respects”, a task for the next 100 years. There was also the usual threats over Taiwan and the need to integrate and control One China more.
July 3, 2021
Interesting
There is a company here in Oxford that specialises in running courses to teach Chinese students about our/western institutions and public service provision
July 4, 2021
It seems the rulers of China have no problems with Chinese students and tourists getting knowledge of how western societies work and live by long sojourns in the West – shows great confidence in their system.
July 3, 2021
Good Morning,
A VERY dangerous man, looking to place his name alongside Mao’s in the annals of history. Will he achieve ‘One China’ with Taiwan by economic or military force? He will try, that is for certain.
July 3, 2021
Don’t forget the ‘one china’ includes the whole of the South China Seas, and constructing military islands with runways for their large bombers and ports for their blue water fleet….everyone should be concerned
July 3, 2021
Say a prayer. Moses defeated a mighty army through prayer. And if people don’t believe in Moses, then look at how Joan of Arc, a young woman aged 17, defeated a powerful army, through prayer.
(When Field Marshal Brooke -later Viscount Alanbrooke – heard the German bombers for the first time, he got down on his knees and prayed. No doubt, his prayers – like all prayers – as well as courage on the battle field – contributed to the final defeat of Nazi Germany).
July 3, 2021
The World? – or One China?
July 3, 2021
Glen
“….everyone should be concerned”
Not my problem. Let the American corporates sort it out, they after all caused the problem in the first place with their lust for cheap labour.
July 3, 2021
I agree with your general assessment that itâs a pacific rim problem, however one-china are also expanding and controlling the Panama Canal basin and vast parts of Africa with global interests in mineral mining
July 4, 2021
+1
July 3, 2021
He already has : “Xi Jinping Thought” was incorporated into the PRC’s constitution three or four years ago.
July 3, 2021
I am not condoning a regime which does not allow free speech but I would lose my job if I stated reasons why the UK has present problems and all sorts of mis readings would be cited to rid me: believe me I have been there.
July 3, 2021
Yes, Margaret – employment law in Tory Britain allows employers far too much arbitrary power over employees on matters unconnected with their effectiveness at their job and simply to do with opinions and their attempts to exercise free speech out of work, doesn’t it?
You should vote for a party which will address this injustice.
Incidentally, the Human Right to free speech only protects against abuses by the State, and not those by the private sector, as of course you are fully aware.
July 3, 2021
Well apart from maybe Reform UK I can’t think of another party in this country that would be any different when it comes to situations like Margaret is talking about.
July 3, 2021
Good God, Martin, are you only just waking up to the scourge of people losing their jobs because they don’t have the correct monolithic establishment Remain/Woke/CAGW views? From teaching assistants in state schools who think there are only two sexes; to people who say that catastrophic global warming is a hoax; to those who believe that Sars-Cv-2 escaped from a Chinese lab; to scientists who say masks and untargeted lockdowns are useless; all have been harassed, de-monetised, censored, prevented from following their chosen profession, or sacked from both private and state employment.
July 3, 2021
oh! of course ..Free Speech in China, N.Korea, Russia – – in the Labour Party.
You make me having a laugh, except it is rather hollow.
July 3, 2021
MiC
” employment law in Tory Britain allows employers far too much arbitrary power over employees ”
Don’t forget the origin of such laws, and indeed nearly all forms of political correctness….BLAIR !
Yes the Tories are also guilty, but only for not repealing Blair’s treasonous cack.
July 3, 2021
Yes and Johnson is proving as flaky as his critics said he would be so expect no leadership/courage from this government on this issue allowing Social Media mob rule.
July 3, 2021
You might lose your job, but will you disappear too? Families never to speak your name?
July 4, 2021
The bat virus has undoubtedly made the western world more like China in terms of control over our thoughts, our ability to freely express them and our right to free association. Only officially approved groups like XR and BLM appear to have escaped violent police crack downs. Social Credits will be the next step no doubt.
July 3, 2021
It is an appalling regime. Thank you President Trump for waking the world up to its threat after years and decades of kow tow. Letâs hope Biden doesnât go weak – he appears more focused on alliances which is the only way to tackle this threat, but in other respects the omens are not good.
We also need to guard against the insidious threat of CCP influence and propaganda. This is distorting universities, businesses, bureaucracies and governments. A recent example was the coordinated trashing last year of the Wuhan lab leak theory as the cause of covid – with academic journals, scientists with conflicts of interest and – most disgracefully of all – the big tech media platforms rushing to shut down any debate and denigrating any dissent. The cause of Wuhan must be investigated rigorously, and if the CCP is found to have covered it up the world must think of a suitable response.
July 3, 2021
Well, I wouldn’t want to live there, certainly, but compared to theocracies or failed states, in Africa say, it is a marvel.
I doubt whether John would ever get to meet such a party from certain ME states, and if he ever did then their terror at commenting on their monarch or whatever might be rather more conspicuous.
He might get equal reticence in merely asking a group of UK employees what they thought of their management too, come to that.
July 3, 2021
It is a marvel – successful, world domination in sight. More and more of its people have benefits associated with western style living. Leaders have little publicity. The other significant rival for Dictatorship is of course N.Korea where the people don’t really participate in economic benefits, but are denied information about the world. True 1984. Russia again is an example but shows the ruthlessness of its Dictator as a show of personal strength – an ego trip.
In all these examples the key factor is fear of expressing opinion, how can a citizen keep up with the approved State view in a changing environment, where you may be reported just like in the worst of the Eastern European purges.
July 3, 2021
It’s not an eg0 trip-it’s ingrained in Eurasian politics through the millenia.You lot are really going to have to get to grips with the fact that the larger (and increasingly more powerful)part of the continent subscribes to different values and ideals to the Atlantic fringe.
From a deep historical perspective,eastern europe is far more connected to central asia than it is to western Europe.
July 3, 2021
Putin not on an ego trip? What a sheltered view of politics and foreign policy you must have.
July 3, 2021
@MiCk
But, surely, you would prefer to live there instead of this god-forsaken land – voluntarily exiled from the mothership? How about if China joined the EU – would you live there then?
July 3, 2021
This is precisely what Norman Mailer in an interview in 1995 said of his experience when going to Russia to research his book on Lee Oswald. He had to phrase his questions very carefully or the translator would rephrase them for him so that the question would be put in a more indirect way, if it wasn’t the chances were that it wouldn’t get a response
July 3, 2021
I would suggest that the free worlds policy towards China should be containment. The chinese have no interest in the rights of intellectual property owners, debate, or freedom of thought within China. They prefer sanitisation from the rest of the world lest it contaminate their political model.
Those who advocate trade with China only do so out of financial self interest, and there is plenty of that within our establishment. My experience of chinese methodology is that they only buy one off examples of cutting edge technology, learn from it and then insist on future production within China. I could quote a classic example for the extraction of deep mined coal. Which they will continue to do for the next hundred years or more whatever the climate fanatics have to say about it.
Containment and isolation while making sure that they are aware of our defensive strength is the way to deal with them. Like their Covid, they would contaminate the free world for their benefit at every opportunity. Sup with a long handled spoon.
July 3, 2021
People should keep in mind that everytime they buy something made in China they are investing in the CCP.
July 4, 2021
Indeed and the product is often substandard.
July 3, 2021
China is now a world superpower. Famine is no longer a problem. Neighbouring countries are no longer capable of invading China and oppressing the people. Chinaâs prospects look good and things are getting better for its people.
China now has the confidence to encourage population growth in contrast to the ruthless one child policy of recent times. The West would rather import cheap labour and Cecil Rhodes patriotic views on our nation are no longer celebrated; instead his statues are targeted for removal.
The West has helped China by getting them to work on the cheap for it. Short term gains outweigh long term interests.
Change in China – if it occurs – will be driven by the demands of a prosperous middle class.
July 3, 2021
@Peter
Yes, that is what the world really, really needs. More bloody people. To have any chance of a decent quality of life for everyone, we need to massively reduce the global population. A one child policy for a couple of generations would be a great idea – for every country.
July 3, 2021
You don’t need to impose anything, except education and opportunities for girls and women. Girls and women who have the choice might decide to have less children or even none at all. In societies where this is possible, the population actually decreases. Populations increase where women are denied choice and pushed into forced marriages.
July 3, 2021
Mike Wilson,
Yours is the bog standard, but small-minded, outlook that has been successfully sold to The West. It fits in nicely with a Replacement strategy where you continually import labour as there are not enough natives to do the basics.
It is human nature to want to procreate and pass on your genes. China no longer legislates against that by diktat.
July 4, 2021
@Peter
Saying it is âhuman natureâ to want to procreate is true but to suggest that countering this biological need in order to facilitate a sustainable, good quality of life for the global population is, in your opinion, âsmall mindedâ. My opinion is that you are clearly unintelligent. Current estimates are for 10 billion by the end of this century. And I assume you are not so small minded that you donât realise that unrestrained population growth is exponential. 30 billion by the year 2200?
July 4, 2021
Population growth is often said to be exponential. However it has been shown (macrotrends.net World Population Growth Rate 1950-2020) that the exponent k in P=P_o exp(kt) is not constant (a true exponential growth) but actually decreasing: 1.88 in 1951, 1.87 in 1961, 1.77 in 1981, 1.63 in 1991, 1.29 in 2001, 1.21 in 2011, 1.05 in 2020.
Whatever the reason for the reduction in the growth rate (girlsâ education, better health services in developing countries, increase in overall well-being, âŠ) projections give 8.55 bn people in 2030, 9.74 bn in 2050, 10.46 bn in 2070, ⊠10.87 bn in 2100.
And it would seem that with 4 m Covid-related deaths in the last 16 months nobody is daring enough to make a projection for 2200 âŠ
July 3, 2021
No, a one-child policy would not be a great idea for this reason: given the modern ability to determine the gender of a foetus, many cultures would do just what the Chinese did, and abort females, leading to a dangerous excess of adult males unable to find partners, and to an increase in regarding girls/women as chattels to be bought and sold.
July 4, 2021
Really, I am unaware of the mass ability to choose the sex of a child.
July 4, 2021
How do you think that countries like India and China have got to 948/1000 and 950/1000 female/male ratio?
July 3, 2021
‘Short term gains outweigh long term interests’
– Part of our boom and bust economy by politicians over-heating the economy. Instead, we can only build a strong and dynamic economic – in the LONG-TERM – by encouraging work ethic in our people, people relying on themselves instead of state, men being men and taking responsibility for providing for their wives and children, of creating interesting high quality high tech products that we export abroad. Etc .. I am not being idealistic. The Quakers achieved great things in business following these principles. Politics or economic policy isn’t powerful enough to deliver all this (in fact, can have the opposite effect even though well-intentioned). We ultimately can only influence our people, for the better in a benevolent way, through Education, the Media, Arts, Religion etc – and Conservatism has to get properly involved in all these – not just be about politics (important as that is of course).
We need to return more to the values of our Judaeo-Christianity heritage and the best values of our Greco-Roman world as well.
July 3, 2021
Peter
“China is now a world superpower.”
Nah, the CCP likes to make out it is, but in reality the US could wipe it off the map if they chose to.
The problem here is the money……..too many US Incs making obscene profit through China, at the sacrifice of American jobs.
July 3, 2021
My grandfather at the height of the Cold War said the Russians werenât the threat but the Chinese who could put an army of â100 millionâ into battle. How prescient.
This government hasnât a clue how to deal with them and if I were the Chinese leadership I would laugh at the latest toothless threat. Virtue signalling over Hong Kong, zero effect, putting back our digital infrastructure development by years and costing British shareholders billions through the political driven ban on Huweii, zero effect, whilst even last week crowing about a new battery factory, funded by, yes youâve guessed it, Chinese money.
And talking about a complete lack of a coherent policy, if you have to quarantine for 10 days coming back from an amber country you get harassed with a daily phone call and a threat from a knock on the door (just like China Sir JR).
However you also have to take two tests, that do not have to be taken from home. You can travel to get them done. So in my case I cannot go to my local shop or even a walk in the open air but I can travel on public transport, two trains three stations, ticket purchase etc for an hour and a half. Only âstupidâ politicians and civil servants canât see how ludicrous that is. The NHS are handing out millions of antigen tests to be done at home but not acceptable for returnees to the U.K. it is punishment, no other word for it. China would be proud.
July 3, 2021
And we now see a Chinese firm is to be allowed to take over our largest microchip country and guess what. This company makes chips for, amongst others, Huweii, so the U.K. government bans Huweii at vast cost to us but allows in a company that supplies it with chips that are allegedly a security risk.
Unfortunately the âbutterfly mindâ of Boris means that Less virtue signalling rubbish and more joined up thinking is impossible.
July 3, 2021
@Nigel
Well, not really. Even at the height of the cold war it was obvious the next war would not involve millions of foot soldiers.
July 3, 2021
I guess you have a degree in pedantry. The italics indicated I was using it as colour to support the overall point that he foresaw their threat.
July 4, 2021
Pointing out that something someone wrote was either inaccurate or irrelevant is not pedantry. Ooops, now Iâm being pedantic.
July 3, 2021
Nig l. In addition we are about to sell off our forth largest Supermarket to a Japanese private equity fund. You have to wonder how much of the UK’s productive assets will not eventually be owned by foreigners.
Nissan sold off its UK battery manufacturing plant in Sunderland (Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC)) to the Chinese Envision Group in 2019, to reduce the costs of batteries for its Leaf EV that it builds in Sunderland.
The new company Envision AESC, is coming back to expand its EV battery production in Sunderland to 9 GW per year; expanding to 35 GW per year in the near future; the latter, enough to fit out 600,000 UK manufactured Electric Vehicles per year, it will dominate the market for UK EV’s batteries for years to come.
The bottom line is that Japanese; Chinese; French and German (basically EU) vehicle manufactures, have positioned the UK EV market to exactly where they want it post Brexit.
July 3, 2021
Its also possible to see where the eu gets its model from, thank goodness we are out. But now we must ensure its permanent .
July 3, 2021
MFD
Except we are out in name only viz; BRINO. What we have now is the establishment’s plan B…..’if they dare to vote leave fool them into thinking we have left ‘
July 3, 2021
A very perceptive post, Sir John. Thank you.
July 3, 2021
Many years ago, growing up in the 1960’s, my older brother developed an interest in short-wave radio – then used by nation states to broadcast news, topical programmes and propaganda to their countries and the world. He used an old Bush valve radio with three bands – long wave, medeum wave and shortwave. Having received a station, he would write up a reception report and post it off to the station using a stamp cadged from our father, who was an old Desert Rat (and very proud of it). In due course a QSL card confirming his reception of the station would arrive, these could be very colourful and often came with a programe and frequency schedule etc. My brother had a nice collection of them.
One day, in the evening, an MI5 spook and a uniformed police officer knocked on our door and stood there with a large cardboard box plastered with “Radio Peking” stickers and “Air Mail” etc. Having been ushered in, they demanded to speak to my brother, who was ten years old. “We have reason to believe that “XXXX” has been communicating with a foreign power” and “What!! …… he’s got a short wave radio!! does it transmit?” and “is he a communist? don’t you know what your son is up to in his bedroom on a short wave radio?”
The box was opened in our fathers presence. It contained about 50 copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book “The Thoughts of Chairman Mao” also a very nice QSL card full of Chinese characters, a copy of Karl Marx “Das Kapital” and several copies of the English language version of the “Peoples Daily” with a letter asking XXXX to distribute the material at his school…..
All this stuff was confiscated, as was the bog-standard Bush radio, 25yards of long-wire aerial and his collection of QSL cards. My father was appalled. Today original copies of the “Little Red Book” change hands on Ebay for substantial sums….
July 3, 2021
@ Sakara Gold – so was your brother a spy then and just using his contact with other radio stations as cover?
July 3, 2021
At 10 years old. Presumably that was when he was not being forced up chimneys.
July 3, 2021
@Nigel
Get a grip. No-one forced children up chimneys. They went up willingly to earn an honest crust. It’s a pity more kids these days don’t take their responsibility to contribute to the family more seriously – instead of demanding the latest phone – free!
July 3, 2021
Mike Wilson
“Get a grip. No-one forced children up chimneys ”
Ahem, Mr Wilson !
My elder brothers forced me part way up one.
July 4, 2021
Surely they were forced up by the need to get some money. Aren’t many people now forced (not at the point of a gun) to get a job if they don’t want to be skint or rely on others.
July 3, 2021
By evil Tory-voting Brexit pensioners presumably, Nig?
July 3, 2021
Sakura Gold,
Very John Le Carre. âThe Honourable Schoolboyâ perhaps?
July 3, 2021
My late father-in-law devised the technology at GCHQ for discerning as to which station a short wave radio was tuned remotely, by monitoring the feeble radiation from the local oscillator.
However it was the frequency-modulation of this signal with that of the tuned station caused by valve microphony and/or by the effects of AGC on the common-cathode mixer-oscillator valve which were conclusive.
This is all public domain knowledge now, but he was engaged in extensive 1960s flyover monitoring missions using this gear, with the particular objective of finding out whether figures such as trade unionists were receiving coded messages from Moscow etc.
Whether it was used in this instance or if it were Post Office mail-related surveillance cannot be resolved.
July 3, 2021
all that to make what point exactly?
July 4, 2021
Well, the UK was pretty well just as much a spying on its own people place as was Russia, it seems, doesn’t it?
July 3, 2021
A brave article and I applaud John for that.
Backbench Tory MPs have been silent for far too long, for party loyalty considerations, regarding the destructive and insidious nature of Marxism and in particular the Chinese variant that now appears to control many areas of British life and culture. I am sure internal and external proponents are giddy with excitement at their apparent success in capturing many British institutions especially academia especially all the main parties.
I believe China is an existential threat to western democracy and our way of life. The CCP spread their influence in a covert manner using all and any form of strategy to assert control. BLM (take note kneeling footballers and those who support this Marxist symbolism designed to demonise and impose collective punishment on the majority) for example received (some? Ed) of its income from the CCP. I struggle to understand how this xxxxx organisation has not been proscribed and then I realise that the very people who support it and its divide and conquer aims have now penetrated deep into British institutions.
The British establishment now look to China and their brutal system of control and see inspiration and ideas on how it can assert control.
As an aside. The Batley by-election was without question the most shocking example of party extremism on all sides that I have witnessed. Laurence Fox exposed all parties and their silence on threats of violence and use of intimidation because the perps didn’t tick the ‘far right’ identity. I am pig sick of this Marxist ‘far right’ slander against the white majority who dare to confront the racism and hatred of Labour and their poisonous allies. This party talks the language of ‘hope not hate’ and yet refuse to condemn threats of violence, Anti-Semitism and homophobia. How long must this concealment continue?
I implore the Tories to defend freedom of expression and liberal democracy before it dies leaving us all in a mire of despair. Yes, the party must take sides rather than try and remain silent to insulate itself from fascist left denunciations
Repeal fascist Hate Crime laws that are now applied only it seems to a certain section of our population while ignoring the true source of hate. It stinks that this biased implementation of this most vile law can continue
Without our voice we are nothing more than slaves
July 3, 2021
Great post but donât get your hopes up. If Johnson has the balls to deal with the obvious nonsense of Hancock and is paying the price, dealing bravely with a subject like this is well beyond him.
Would I want him or many of his colleagues on my shoulder, in a sports team, tough business environment etc No. they would run/hide. Liz Truss , Pritti Patel and Dominic Raab would bite me. Chapeau to them.
July 3, 2021
@Dom
Why?
July 3, 2021
DOM, +1
Your voice is strong and your observations and comments are accurate in focus, as strong as the Conservative Party voice is weak, silent even, and pathetically evasive, and thoroughly useless.
July 3, 2021
Spot On
July 3, 2021
DOM
“Repeal fascist Hate Crime laws ”
A good contribution DOM, but concerning hate crime law I don’t see how it’s enforcable anyway. I hate lot’s of people, I have a right not to talk to or acknowledge them if I so choose. Will I be arrested and thrown in jail ? Let them try it.
I hate crappy plastic Chinese goods, is it a crime not to buy them ? no and it never will be.
Recollect that the PC establishment and it’s subversive legal chums tried to make misogyny a criminal offence, but failed to balance against misandry……both of which defined as a ‘dislike’ and the former falls foul of gender discrimination laws.
It all boils down to enemies of our culture trying to criminalise us if we ‘dislike’ things they want us to like, i.e if we dare to challenge their gradual errosion of society.
Ignore these left wing crack-pot subversive legislations, as do most of us true Brits.
July 3, 2021
At least China doesn’t pretend to advocate and support free speech like the UK. God help you if you speak out against this woke nonsense that is changing our language, eradicating our history, and destroying our future. Any form of decent towards the mob is met with cries of racist, phobic, or some other ist to keep you in your box. So don’t use free speech in this country as an example to anyone.
July 3, 2021
Much truth in this.
July 3, 2021
âIf the West wants to protect itself, it must face up to the reality of China
The Chinese Communist Party is 100 years old; we must not let it rule the world in its second centuryâ
Charles Moore today in the Telegraph.
July 3, 2021
What we are seeing here is the application of the Maoist cultural revolution , where language is politicised , and we have these staged managed ‘struggle sessions’ where people who have failed to toe the politically correct line are forced to publicly recant with the threat of loss of jobs etc if they don’t.
July 3, 2021
This is indeed so but our PM says and does nothing to counter it. I dare say he and his wife either think it will pass or he in particular does not have the courage to do anything.
I tried to say a week or two ago that if I wasn’t 76 years old I’d leave the country because it is being ruined, but it didn’t get through.
July 3, 2021
Yes I too thought the absence of leadership was encouraging all the BLM, statue pulling down, cultural Marxism , but when you see how they decked the No10 door out in LBGT colours( what a mess) the wokery afflicting our military, here they have direct control of what is taking place, yet turning our military into a joke, and the take a look at the laws they are trying to bring in on Social Media , at best authoritarian wokery , it would appear it isn’t neglect, it isn’t something they hope will pass, but something they are fully on board with.
July 3, 2021
PW
“I tried to say a week or two ago that if I wasnât 76 years old Iâd leave the country because it is being ruined ”
My sentiment also.
Personally I’d fancy moving to Russia as I quite admire Putin. He does’nt put up with shit from subversives, I like that.
I also like the work he has done for wildlife conservation.
July 3, 2021
that gave me a big laugh.
July 3, 2021
@BW
Well, you have just spoken out. Did you get away with it? Have the secret police been round, kicked the door in at 4 o’clock at the morning and whisked you off to an asylum centre for correction?
July 3, 2021
BW, well said.
July 3, 2021
So what, materially, happens to you if you spout your opinions here?
Unlike in Iran, Saudi Arabia etc., nothing, does it?
Oh, so someone might say that they disagree, and make a case for your claims being unfair.
That, it appears is too much for you.
And your kind call often call others “snowflakes”.
Deary me.
July 3, 2021
Hear hear.
July 3, 2021
BW
“God help you if you speak out against this woke nonsense that is changing our language, eradicating our history, and destroying our future.”
……..I dislike Boris Johnson
Oh dear, I appear to have ‘disliked’
July 3, 2021
The cult of the dead âex-dear leaderâ is a problem well beyond China, North Korea, Russia, Iran etc. In all of these countries a flawed leader has taken on a wider symbolic role overshadowing and dominating modern politics as their already bad philosophy is bastardised by their disciples.
Reagan was bad enough but the âRepublicansâ who came after him – Gingrich, Bush, McConell, Trump – got progressively worse. Some Republicans are now just full on crazy. They get progressively more extreme. In what sensible country does a fruitcake like Majorie Taylor Greene ever get elected?
Here the cult of Thatcher ravages the modern Tory party. She is long gone but swathes of Conservatives still seem to be devoted to this deeply flawed leader. She would shudder with the flag draped culture wars which her corrupt and incompetent disciples in this government engage with help from the mostly ignorant sycophants on its backbenches.
Governing by consent is always the best option. Like the majority of voters in this country I donât consent to being governed by the clown Johnson and his morons. 58% of us expressly refused our consent at the last election. Tell us Mr Redwood how your sham elections are any better than what happens in China? At least they donât pretend to be a democracy.
July 3, 2021
52% voted for Brexit yet you haven’t accepted that majority result and have been moaning about it for 5 years and counting. It seems you only “consent” to policies you agree with.
July 3, 2021
@Roy Grainger
But, and I think I can speak for Andrew here, that so called ‘52%’ does not take into account those that did not vote. As far as I am concerned, those who did not vote would definitely have voted for Brexit – they were just too busy earning a living under the oppressive EU to make it to the polling station. Obviously.
July 3, 2021
You voted to leave and you left. And I am killing myself with laughter at how pathetic your Brexit is.
I really hadnât appreciated how much I would enjoy ridiculing you all. Itâs such fun.
July 4, 2021
The thing is, ridiculing people (apart from showing a rather nasty side to your character) doesnât really work if the basis for the ridicule is not real. Itâs a bit like a short man trying to ridicule a 6 foot man over his height. The taller man would simply think the short man had taken leave of his senses. Which is how those of us who voted to leave the EU feel about your âridiculeâ.
July 3, 2021
He absolutely has accepted the result, as have I.
We both think that the position in which our once-great country now finds itself as a result is awful however, and will use our freedoms and democratic rights to improve it if we can.
That’s freedom and democracy – you would appear to want to end those.
Yes, Leave won the advisory vote, but 17 million out of 66 million is NOT a majority of all the people, and in any by-modern-standards-normal constitution it would have fallen far short of the criterions for constitutional change.
July 3, 2021
The biggest vote in the history of the UK MiC
You are counting in your 66 million:-
All those under 18
All those who are not UK citizens
All those who couldn’t be bothered to vote.
July 3, 2021
Just how many times do you keep telling us you have accepted the result? If true then just shut up.
July 3, 2021
Martin in Cardiff, You’ve accepted the result? Don’t make me ******* laugh, you shill !
It was NOT ‘advisory’.
You may have (very conveniently) forgotton that the Govt booklet – delivered to EVERY household in the country – told me, and you, and everyone else that “This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide”.
Almost every post you make (both on here and elsewhere) whinges and whines about it.
You imply that c.48,589,258 DIDN’T vote to leave (…66m less 17,410,742).
Well – and to echo Peter2’s response – you wanna play with stats? Well, 49,858,759 people (…your maths skills are up to the task I am sure…. 66m minus 16,141,241…) is a greater number of people who DIDN’T vote to REMAIN a part of the EU.
Give it a rest FFS.
July 3, 2021
‘forgotten’, even.
July 4, 2021
Ah, the old âadvisory voteâ bolleaux. I remember the document sent to every household in the country which informed us âthe government WILL IMPLEMENT WHAT YOU DECIDEâ.
Name one person who ever suggested before the referendum that it was âadvisoryâ. The fact that the legislation was drafted by amateurs is irrelevant. If the government had turned round afterwards and said âonly joking, we just wanted your opinionâ – there would have been riots. Call yourself a Democrat?! Youâre an autocrat, be honest with yourself.
July 3, 2021
Putting Reagan in the same basket as the others confirms your zero knowledge driven only by a generic dislike of anything right of centre. I guess you dislike Reagan and Thatcher because of their crucial role in bringing down the Iron Curtain and their economic policies that revitalised their economies.
I guess you would prefer Red Robbo etc still controlling the economy. Closed shops where you only get a job if you sucked up to a Shop Steward, you father worked there, you were a member of the Labour Party etc
A âchampagne socialistâ , second home etc with a convenient memory loss/in denial of the political and economic realities back then.
You are not related to Polly Toynbee are you?
July 3, 2021
I literally want to scrap every penny of your pensions because I want to keep more of my money for me and give less of it to all of you, and you think Iâm a socialist. Itâs very funny.
July 3, 2021
But you say you are an employer Andy.
My pension came from decades of me paying into a scheme called National Insurance topped up by my company’s contributions.
At the same time I put money every week into a private pension scheme.
Do you not understand how both types of pensions work?
July 4, 2021
No Andy, just a plonker.
July 4, 2021
In your crazy world, would you be refunding me all the money I paid during 48 years of working that was used to pay for state pensions?
I presume, using the same logic, you donât want to pay for the NHS, Defence, Education, Roads etc.
July 3, 2021
Ps not to mention secondary picketing, print unions fighting to keep outdated technology and the right of Mr Mouse to sign up in a false name and earn vast sums for over night shifts etc.
That culture still exists on London Underground. I guess you are happy that they can hold the public to ransom and that technology considered normal in other transport systems is denied us.
To paraphrase a Peter Sellers film. I guess your all right Jack.
July 3, 2021
Nig l, Two good ripostes which I fully endorse, having lived through those times you cite and rejoiced in their being consigned to the bin of foolish and disastrous policies.
The part played by Sir John Redwood in restoring reason after such distortions and corruption is most praiseworthy.
That Johnsonâs Government has neither an ear nor a role for such talent speaks volumes.
July 3, 2021
Andy
“Here the cult of Thatcher ravages the modern Tory party”
…..er, no Andy. If it did the country would’nt be in such a mess.
July 3, 2021
The probable simple reason your Chinese students did not want to air their views publicly may have been the simple worry that one of their number was an official communist party member, reporting back to big brother their behaviour, thoughts and actions, ready for the inevitable correction procedure to take place when they eventually returned home !.
July 3, 2021
@Alan Jutson
Nail on head.
July 3, 2021
+1
July 3, 2021
Yes, that may well have been the reason. One Chinese person who spoke to me with nobody else in earshot said, unprompted, that Mao had been responsible for the deaths of 60 million (yes, 60 million) people.
July 3, 2021
That Mao made mistakes seemed to be the prevailing received view some twenty-five years ago when I first had contact with semi-official Chinese persons whose work (in Beijing) would put them in regular contact with foreigners. Amplification was not offered. Having encountered extremely circumspect but clearly rigidly communist Chinese as fellow undergraduates some twenty years before that, I was surprised but pleased that Deng Xiaoping’s changes had led to such a relaxation in thinking. Perhaps some reversal is now underway?
July 3, 2021
I have worked all over the world. I generally had a rule never to express a view or even discuss local political matters. However once in China I was with a colleage who asked our co-workers there what they thought of China’s colonial activities in Tibet. They were genuinely puzzled, they simply didn’t know what had been happening there and why that might be a problem – it wasn’t that they were scared to talk about it, it was just China had suppressed news on it so successfully they didn’t know. Maybe now it is harder to control what information people can access it will be a driver for change.
July 3, 2021
Twenty years ago I was discussing Taiwan with a Chinese Phd student in the UK, she was very clear in her view that they were liberating their Chinese brothers from the imperial Americans and the commercial influences of the JapaneseâŠ.she didnât waver, theyâre saving a long lost sibling that had been kidnapped, and they have to have a âwinâ (save âfaceâ) â âŠit internet is helping
July 3, 2021
Much like when Auntie, and the rest of the UK MSM refuse to talk about anti-lockdown protests or, if they do, they underplay them.
đ
July 3, 2021
I once asked a Chinese official in a quiet moment what did he think about democracy and he answered – ah yes he agreed with democracy hut only the educated should have a vote!
July 3, 2021
Approval for China`s leadership amongst the Chinese is spectacularly high though and whilst some smugly claim they know no better, I suspect they are not so much ignorant, as aware of how much better life has become for them.
In one’s hierarchy of needs, material wants and security are first after that we value personal freedom and if we are used to both we start to value more conceptual benefits such as ‘democracy’.
Europe still remembers decades of occupation, genocidal war in the Balkans and the threat of Russia .Germany`s history is of constant military threat . 20 percent of the total population of Germany died during the 30 year war , its borders have changed countless times .
Britain`s modern history has known none of these realities, no revolutions, no terror no famine and now its elderly population sit in houses they bought for tuppence of mountains of capital bored and with little better to do than to invent grievances and indulge hobbies.
We know how the Chinese look to us , how do we look to them?
July 3, 2021
To slyly endorse barbaric totalitarianism should come as no surprise to anyone who understands the mindset of your average Europhile. Democracy and the supremacy of individual freedoms are an anathema to these wretches
July 3, 2021
Brilliant.
July 3, 2021
It is difficult to compare one country with another. But, here, with a relatively tiny population of about 70 million, we have a lot of people leading pretty grotty lives. In towns with no work, low wages and people wandering around hopelessly on mobility trikes – smoking, drinking cheap beer and looking pretty defeated and lost.
And we have China with one and a half billion people spread out over a huge land mass. Now, while things might not be great – what has happened over the last 30 years or so is pretty incredible. I can’t help wondering what China would be like if we had the likes of Johnson and the Tory Party running it.
July 3, 2021
Go into a classroom in the U.K. now and ask about views on imposed mass immigration and the coronavirus and I dare say you would get the same uncomfortable shoe shuffling response!
Thereâs thought!
One difference⊠apparently China has criminalised the defamation of its heroes.
July 3, 2021
SighâŠ
A thought.
July 3, 2021
Speaking of whichâŠ
I see that today is Julian Assangeâs Birthday.
July 3, 2021
“….I dislike authoritarian systems where people are terrified to have a view, and where even the establishment cannot always supply a clear line.”
In fact just like Britain today. We get more like Maoist China under this Tory government every single day. Soon we’ll have social credit scores, restrictions on travel, compulsory medical treatments- oh hang on- we already have.
July 3, 2021
+ many, many!
July 3, 2021
Events in Batley have blown apart the politically contrived myth that diversity is strength. The politics of multiculturalism is just that , about politics and politics has one aim, to secure power.
The apolitical nature of civil human concern and true compassion for our fellow human beings has now taken a subservient role to the political exploitation of human beings and their differences to achieve total domination over any and all opposition to this most poisonous of Marxist ideology
As Thatcher declared ‘there is no such as society’. She understood the political nature of such an ideology and it’s primary purpose
July 3, 2021
Gosh! How right you are!
Of course! A truly integrated multi racial society would have no value for the elite/govt.
There would be no chance for divide and rule.
Thatâs why they chose the multicultural route and kept its meaning very quiet.
Our strength is in unity⊠if we could achieve it.
July 4, 2021
Interesting. It would seem the TDoATM ( âTrue Defender of All Things Maggishâ) is asleep at the wheel today.
Wakey wakey.
July 4, 2021
Still grumpy then heffy I see.
July 3, 2021
Interesting.
But who might be a better commentator on things Chinese, an English MP talking to a few Chinese 6th-form students or Sylvie Bermann, who as a Mandarin-speaking diplomat in China between 1979 and 1982 then again as âambassadriceâ between 2011 to 2014 might have seen events unfold and discussed with various Chinese and foreign actors.
âLa Chine en eaux profondesâ, 2017, Stock.
BTW, after her turn in London between 2014 and 2019 she published âGoodbye Britannia: Le Royaume-Uni au defi du Brexitâ, 2021, Stock.
Unfortunately two books not (yet) translated into English.
July 3, 2021
We are free to criticise our leaders; this is a long standing British tradition but we are not able to influence them to prevent them destroying our country by importing millions of unassimilable aliens who we are not free to criticise either; nor can we criticise those whose vile purpose is to destroy us from within by this means.
Watching the Chinese celebrate their 100th anniversary as a socialist state, it was salutary to be reminded that they were all ethnically Chinese; Mao was a monster but since then their rulers have liberalised the economy and politics takes place within the CCP umbrella. Xi is a very powerful man but he probably wouldn’t last long if he tried to import the self-destructive garbage which Western politicians inflict on their electors.
In addition to the formal parades and speeches, the Chinese also put on a Gala celebration with historical enactments to music, singing and dance.
July 3, 2021
JR, Each and every one of us is fallible. Your, and my, dislike of authoritarian systems is simply a consequence of that truth. The more absolute the power the more absolute the corruption, as Lord Acton tells us. Because each authoritarian – whether Marx, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, or Xi, for example – cannot ever be wholly right (and is frequently dreadfully wrong), even as he insists he is infallible. All while his errors are being duplicated without hindrance. And ideologies are just a disguise authoritarians wear to pretend to the gullible that their insights are not as fallible as anyone else’s.
July 3, 2021
Sir John,
Back in the days of communist oppression under the soviet union, for most people their primary concern was food on the table, as well as a reasonable paying job and half-way decent place to live. That was the way it had always been and always would be, or so it seemed.
The experience of the Chinese people under communism has not been the same. They began with so much less, and over the decades have endured true hardship, unimaginable to people in the west. Yet now so many of them are affluent with an enormous and still growing middle class. They travel the world to study, to work, and as tourists. None of this would have been permitted under the soviet system. The Chinese people are proud of their country and what it has achieved in only a few short decades. But the politics are best avoided.
July 3, 2021
Off topic, I have just sent this letter to our local newspaper the Maidenhead Advertiser:
“”No one foresaw that any government would make such a mess of Brexit.”
That is the rather whimsical title of a recent article by Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, but is it true?
It did not go entirely unnoticed that David Cameron’s EU referendum law was silent on what should ensue if we voted to leave, so there were already suspicions that a Tory government would resort to dirty tricks to try to overturn or neutralise a “wrong” result.
More than five years on and we have Lord Frost, Brexit minister, and Brendan Lewis, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, using the pages of the Irish Times to beg the EU to go easy on us over the Irish protocol agreed by Boris Johnson and passed by Tory MPs.
This is the protocol which a judge in Belfast High Court has just declared to be lawful even though it repeals part of the 1800 Act of Union which unites Great Britain and Northern Ireland, despite Boris Johnson saying in Parliament that it did not have that effect.
Just another brazen lie, like his statement during a television interview that “thereâs no question of there being checks on goods going NI to GB or GB to NIâ – which is the very subject of this pathetic wheedling “please be gentle with us” article in the Irish Times.
But then to be fair it was Theresa May who first put the UK into the position of a supplicant, constantly trying to please Brussels at the same time as she placated the CBI and other business pressure groups, and throwing away our strongest negotiating cards.
This is a national humiliation, for which we can thank the Tory party, although it is not as bad as some we have experienced in our history and it is still remediable.”
July 3, 2021
So it’s masks forever then, is it ?
So the NHS doesn’t get overrun.
It’s OK to be hideously fat though.
Let’s not bother with politicians. Let doctors run the country instead.
July 3, 2021
Ideological systems don’t fall by ideology. They fall when the people no longer feel they need the protection of an authoritarian system, and they reject the trade-off between restrictions in daily life versus the promotion of nationalism. Xi’s speech, with its emphasis on China no longer being “bullied” is an indicator. He knows he has to sell the Chinese people protection and so he offers to protect them against an external enemy he has himself created through his policies. Sooner or later that will no longer work.
July 3, 2021
Has Putin sent his best wishes to the UKRAINE team for tonight’s football match?
July 3, 2021
Chinese students in this country are inevitably rich kids from senior apparatchiks of the regime. They certainly were when I have been in uni’s in recent years. They are not necessarily bright though, some of them taking 5 years to pass a one years masters course (cheap way to get visas to stay in this country too, with minimal uni fees for resit years, I think thats half the point in many cases).
To be fair to them though, they are not from a free society, and there are serious consequences for entire families if any one of them even mistakenly says something someone somewhere in the state apparatus takes offence at. So its easier to simply avoid difficult topics altogether.
To be honest its getting the same way here, with anyone prepared to challenge the woke agenda of media and politics often suffering serious consequences, and teachers in hiding, with death threats against them, because the state is not prepared to protect their free speech.
July 3, 2021
I wonder what commenters here think about Jeremy Warner’s piece today in the Daily Telegraph concerning the future of the City. He is not upbeat.
July 4, 2021
The Daily Telegraph militated for exactly this brexit hammer blow to the City, a fall of 40+% in daily trades so far since that.
July 3, 2021
Sir John,
One should perhaps be mindful that the CCP installs ‘minders’ within the student community in order to monitor their behaviour.
The students will naturally be wary of a ‘mature’ student within their midst, who doesn’t tend to engage with, or attempt to be a part of their group.
Perhaps you were able to observe this for yourself in regard the group that you had contact with?