I WAS wearing a Giordano T-shirt in Hong Kong when my former Edinburgh University student, Aberdonian Robin Munro, pointed out that Giordano was the company that had made possible Jimmy Lai’s career as the leading HK journalist of his generation and a Chinese hero worldwide.
Robin and Jimmy were natural colleagues. The boy Jimmy had swum the Pearl River to get away from Communist pogroms in the 1950s, slaved in the HK sweat shops and then set up his own garment business, Giordano. 1989 politicised him, and he became an analyst and then a critic of what the CCP was doing to his people. In those days in Hong Kong, the British presided over a politically open society. I would buy the anti-communist MingBao newspaper or a magazine from the dissident leftwing of the CCP called ZhanWang. Human Rights Watch opened an office in Hong Kong then, and Jimmy Lai set up his first periodical, Next. 1989 galvanised Robin also, who had just become head of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong and was in Peking during the Tiananmen demonstrations of June 4th 1989.
Both guys did so many things together in human rights advocacy and commemoration of abuses that their fates were intertwined. Had Robin not passed away too young, he would have suffered a similar fate to Jimmy Lai. They were both British citizens.
The fact that Jimmy was a British citizen meant that the CCP could, when Keir Starmer spoke for him on his recent visit to China, have simply extradited him to the UK instead of sending the 78-year-old back to jail for the rest of his life. They’ve often previously let dissidents go to humour trading partners; they could have given Keir Starmer a small win.
Why they didn’t tells us everything we need to know about the rapid decline of our country in the world. For the incarceration of Jimmy Lai was a deliberate insult to the UK, but not the only one flung at Keir Starmer. In several staged humiliations, Starmer was belittled like a tiresome mendicant. Don’t take my word for it, check on the web.
I am not surprised. British politicians have gone out of their way to demean the world’s most successful country and have done so while they have presided over a catastrophic decline in our own economic prospects, educational standards and defensive capabilities. Do you remember how Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss competed to sling invective at the Goliath of the modern world? Because they thought it would benefit their own careers, they were prepared to wreck our relationships with China and turn a mutual respect into mutual contempt.
This is a very rapid turnabout. We don’t have to go back to the days when the last great British governor of Hong Kong, Aberdonian Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, mediated between Beijing and London in fluent Chinese and in an atmosphere of wariness but respect. Even leaders of the CCP who had been thoroughly indoctrinated by their Soviet trainers, admired many things about our country, not least our political processes, our sense of community and our openness.
In 20-odd years of teaching Chinese students and also managing courses for Chinese professionals in the creative and culture industries, and yes, sometimes from government departments, I found that, among able and thoughtful Chinese, there still existed that admiration for, and wistful jealousy of, our society, which was felt by the first president of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yatsen. He was educated in a British medical college.
Many of the intellectuals, and officials, from China, who trained in Britain during the first part of the 20th century, were brought up on admiring observations by Chinese reformers, of whom the most famous is Yan Fu. He expressed his admiration for Britain with the often repeated remark: ‘The most important reason that makes Britain rich and strong, is the guarantee of justice.’ How they longed to implant British justice in China.
As I’ve written in my little book, WHO ARE WE, and how will we survive in the Age of Asia? I’ve often found Chinese much more aware of the great contributions of the UK to humanity in every field from law to politics to medicine to environmental science, than we are ourselves. Unlike some of the nationalist leaders in other parts of the world who maligned British involvement in their countries, Chinese commentators concentrated on the great things about British society and culture and what they might learn from them.
And, until recently, the British people were on the whole positive about China, admiring of the remarkable achievements since the death of Mao. The climate began to change when Boris Johnson started taking orders from Mike Pompeo and we turned China into an enemy.
The CCP has done many despicable things and is still doing them; so are many other governments around the world, especially in the Middle East. Genocide is not unknown in India and Central Asia. Our modern day Wilberforces – and Robin Munroes – fill me with admiration when they fight injustice. But we elect our politicians to defend our interests and provide the framework in which we can earn our living and develop society and culture to ever greater heights – not virtue signal, making enemies abroad while presiding over the ruin of the United Kingdom at home.
If our political leaders had paid more attention to the interests of Britain than to their own careers and petty obsessions, Jimmy Lai would not be in jail today. Neither an Attlee nor a Thatcher would have been slapped in the face by China.
Established in 2006, ThinkScotland is not for profit and relies on donations to continue publishing our wide range of opinions – you can subscribe to our newsletter here, follow us on X here – like and comment on facebook here and support ThinkScotland by making a donation here.
Photo above by Studio Incendo _A4U0349, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99763004 and below by Iris Tong – https://www.voacantonese.com/a/Cantonese-it-hong-kong-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai-charged-with-fraud-denied-bail-20201203-ry/5685771.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97244985
