In The Great Reversal, Brown’s intention is to provide British readers with our own China story and an understanding of how and why the West, through Britain, impacted and shaped the east in the form of China. Paul French caught up with Kerry Brown to talk Anglo-Chinese relations, the issue of our collective China knowledge (or lack of it) and what we can do about it.

Why do you think China and Chinese history have been so historically absent from our school curriculums, and why should we try and boost the study of China at the secondary school level?

British imperial history is extremely contentious, but the one impact it did have that no one could dispute is that Britain became involved, directly or indirectly, in a vast number of other countries and territories. That means that China has largely been seen as a subset of this broader history and tended to get subsumed into it. Things are complicated by the fact that the Chinese story was not straightforward. Apart from Hong Kong, ceded in different stages from 1842, China was part of what some historians have called an ‘informal’ empire and never directly governed. So that makes British involvement a more complex story to tell. Those are two of the more obvious reasons why even the relatively well-defined area of Britain’s relations with China and Chinese history are not easy to teach today and, therefore, largely neglected. On top of that is the obvious unfamiliarity with Chinese dynastic history, which is vast and largely unknown by the British.

On the other hand, Anglo-Chinese relations are widely taught in China, invariably accentuating the negative aspects of the shared histories. Presumably, this doesn’t help either.

Many Chinese people certainly have an understanding of there being a shared history between Britain and China. A lot of this is covered during the patriotic education curriculum introduced since the 1990s, reinforcing the sense that China was victimised and mistreated by colonial powers during the modern era. Of course, Britain figures amongst the most prominent. Much of this history can be contested – if people at least know some of the detail. But the fact is that from the early 19^th century, Britain enjoyed huge economic, military and technological advantages over China (and elsewhere) and exploited those. It did so opportunistically rather than through any intrinsic desire to bully or destroy. But in the end, the collective memories these actions inspired took deep roots amongst the Chinese. British people need to have at least a counter narrative that, while acknowledging some of these issues, at least paints a more complex and better-informed picture. That was one of the reasons why I wrote this history book.

Looking at Anglo-Chinese relations, you talk of a “great reversal”. What do you mean by that?

Britain and China have links going back at least to 1600. Over that four and a quarter centuries, on the whole, in terms of key areas like economic strength, military ability, technological and cultural power, and geopolitical influence, Britain was often stronger than China – particularly in the 19^th century onwards. Britain was the leading industrialising nation in the early modern era, giving it massive capacity in terms of naval technology and the ability to impact and influence China. China certainly had some influence on Britain, it’s true, through its aesthetics and the production of things Britain needed, like tea and porcelain. But the British China story till recently was one where in most areas, Britain enjoyed relative advantages. Since the 1980s, that situation has now reversed. In 2005, China’s economy overtook Britain’s. It is now about three times larger. China now has the largest navy in the world, at least in terms of vessels. In the area of technology, from artificial intelligence to quantum mechanics, it is pulling ahead of Britain. This has happened recently and quickly. That is the great trend of reversal I am referring to.

Do you think that our lack of a collective national understanding of Chinese and Anglo-Chinese history means we tend to demonise the PRC when it comes to trade disagreements, quota battles and more personal enmities, such as with Huawei?

I think the main issue that really struck me as I wrote the book was not so much that Britain demonised China. There had always been strands of Sinophobia and antagonism towards China way back in history, from the era of our first encounter as nations. There was plenty of pretty clear dislike of the British among Chinese, too. What was more striking was how little Britain ever really invested in making its mind up about what sort of place China was, and what sort of people the Chinese were. There seemed to be this deep ambiguity in British attitudes, veering from fascination on the one hand to something approaching apprehensive fear on the other – with no real attempt to create a consensus between these. That China today has a political system that is alien to Britain is obviously an issue – but I wonder whether some of the reactions to China we see now have, lurking behind them, these longer-standing confusions amongst ourselves and, of course, the lack of a really clear understanding of what we think China actually stands for and what kind of common ground we have with the place.

Do you think that this lack of understanding that your book seeks to address also means that Britain’s voice on key issues is less than it should be, as so many of our key decision-makers lack a grasp of the issues?

I think British politicians in recent years (and, of course, there have been exceptions) who deal with these issues often have attitudes towards China but very seldom real knowledge. There are plenty of things that Britain could and should hold China to account for. But the default has become more about stating standard lines of where Britain feels China is not acting properly, and feeling that just stating this is sufficient. I don’t think China looks down on Britain. But these days, I also don’t think it automatically believes Britain occupies some morally superior position. I think if British people understood their history with China more clearly, then they would be in a better place to work out how they can talk to China and how they can select issues that matter and which they need to debate and discuss with China. We might not believe we can understand China, but we can certainly understand our own long history with the place. That at least gives us a place to start from.

And finally, how can we improve our national consciousness of China? More space for China on the national curriculum? More university departments? More exchange visits?

The British story with China is a rich and fascinating one. British people should not find China unfamiliar. When they drink tea from porcelain cups and wear clothing made from silk, usually in gardens with plants and design features once inspired by China, they are all touching the parts of British life today that testify to the deep impact China has had on the way we live and who we are.  Britain also deeply influenced China in its modern development, in ways which were critically important. Just a recognition of this deep joint connection would help. Like I said just now, it might be a big ask to get people to delve into Chinese history and culture per se. But surely understanding British history with China should be more straightforward. And at least there is one relatively accessible book they can find that in now!

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In 1907, some very, very optimistic Europeans — including an Italian Prince, a French racing driver, and a conman or two – gathered in the French Embassy in Beijing to start their long journey across the Gobi, into Mongolia, across the vastness of Russia into Europe and finally down to Paris. Bandits, wolves, angry locals and petrol thieves all added to their problems, as well as cars that were, to say the least, not always totally reliable.

But The Race to the Future is not just about a car race, it’s about a changing world, from one we wouldn’t recognise to one we most certainly do. And it’s about China’s introduction to that now long ubiquitous invention of the modern age – the combustion engine. Paul French caught up with the book’s author Kassia St Clair to talk cars, China and modernity…but not to give away who won the race!

First of all, the race itself. Who had the idea, what were the rules and why on earth start in Peking of all places where cars were virtually unknown and roads basic to say the least in 1907?

The idea came from the Parisian newspaper Le Matin, possibly in collaboration with the owner of the De Dion Bouton car brand, who was brilliant at marketing his vehicles and always keen to make a splash. It was organised in a hurry, and the planning phase was short and a bit chaotic. The result was that there were few concrete rules, and because these shifted over time, drivers were unsure about them. For example, they didn’t really know how long they were expected to stick together as a team and where and when it went from ‘group endeavour’ to ‘race’. The route was something of a classic: it had been done by other writers previously on horseback or using the train. People of that time liked the alliteration and the idea that they were travelling from the ‘capital’ or ‘heart’ of the East to that of the West.

Who were the competitors, and did any car brands we might still recognise today take part?

The competitors were a mixed bunch. The best-known was an Italian prince from the Borghese family. This was one of the most prestigious families in Italy: the Borghese gardens in Rome are named after them, and one ancestor had been a pope. Car enthusiasts, particularly those interested in the early days, would recognise the De Dion-Bouton name; this was one of the best-known car brands of this time (a 1907 De Dion-Bouton car is featured in the lead image of this article). The Itala was also very prestigious; it was an Itala vehicle that was used to open the Brooklands track that same year. The others – the Contal and the Spyker – were more obscure.

Had anyone in China actually seen a car yet in 1907?

Yes! Although the journalists and the drivers flattered their readers back home in France, Britain and Italy by suggesting that theirs were the very first vehicles in China, we know that wasn’t the case. Articles about car parades and letters complaining about reckless drivers in Shanghai and other large cities were being sent to newspapers in the years before the race. We also know that Empress Dowager Cixi owned an early American Duryea vehicle.

So many new technologies were in play during the race, new technologies China was to both occasionally fear and sometimes embrace wholeheartedly. How did race updates get back to Europe and America from China?

This race was as much about the telegraph system as it was about the automobile. The route selected was the one that cleaved to the telegraph wires, so that journalists could send articles back as often as possible, and reports and updates were reprinted all over the world, from Hawaii to Tasmania. By the time the cars had reached western Russia, people knew exactly who the racers were and were often lining the roads to greet them because they’d been reading reports of their progress.

I’m frankly amazed the cars didn’t fall apart ten minutes outside Beijing – no expressways or Ring Roads then! But also there was no infrastructure to support cars – how did they get spare parts, and more importantly, petrol?

So, not all the cars survived the journey, and it also wouldn’t be true to claim that the cars drove the whole way. In lots of places, particularly in the mountain passes to the north of Beijing, they had to be physically dragged by pack animals and teams of people. The motorists carried a lot of spare parts with them, but fuel and oil had to be transported separately and left in caches along the route. In Russia and Europe, this was done largely by train and horse and cart, but in China and Mongolia, fuel and oil were transported by camel and mule.

The cars, the telegraphs… it must have all seemed incredibly modern to the often anti-modern Qing Dynasty (on its way out, but still in power). What did the Chinese government take away, if anything, from this display of modernity in the imperial city?

The Qing Dynasty leaders were deeply suspicious of the entire affair; lots of the motorists had some army experience, and the Chinese officials seemed to have feared that the automobiles were being used to scope out the territory. While the journalists and diplomats protested loudly and vigorously that these suspicions were groundless, we do know that the military applications of the automobile were being seriously considered. For example, a Russian government official explicitly linked the success of the Peking to Paris race to the possible use of cars in warfare. Ultimately, however, the Qing dynasty was unable to resist the pressure from foreign diplomats to allow the race to continue, and the idea of motorcars rushing across China became a really strong symbol of Western power and modernity in the accounts written by contemporaries. It was also obvious that China was a lucrative potential market: one of the entrants actually returned to China not long after the race to open a motorcar concession.

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In recent years, I have discovered a story that I should have known long ago. I am now aiming to tell it whenever I have the chance. Recently, when in China, I gave two lectures to university audiences about Michael Lindsay. Under his Chinese name, Lin Maike, he is known as someone who made a major contribution to the war of resistance against the Japanese occupation.

Lindsay went to China to work at Yenching University, a missionary university in Beijing. But it was not the importation of tutorial teaching, Oxford style, that ensured his legacy. During 1938, it was possible, quite easily, to make contact with the forces fighting the Japanese occupation in Hebei Province. Aiming to investigate for himself, Michael took his bicycle by train from Beijing to Baoding. Then, with two companions, he rode into the countryside for a couple of miles and crossed the Japanese frontline with little difficulty. A mile later, he encountered Chinese sentries and was welcomed. He then worked with the Chinese Communist army for seven years.

The sub-title of my lecture was “a story of commitment and courage”, and there was certainly plenty of both in play. It took courage for Michael to face the danger of working in occupied Beijing when he could easily have left China after a couple of years. This courage was matched by commitment, both to the anti-fascist struggle and also on a deeply personal level: Michael married a Chinese woman named Li Xiaoli (Hsiao Li) in 1941.

Michael’s study in a wing of the President’s house at Yenching University.

At Shanxi University in Taiyuan, I spoke to a group organised by the team responsible for international cooperation and exchange: around 30 young Chinese who were determined to improve their linguistic skills and regularly attend lectures in English. Taiyuan was a good place to deliver this lecture. Hsiao Li was from Shanxi Province and had attended high school in Taiyuan. She had involved herself in student protest, which led to her flight from the Shanxi capital.

In Shanghai, I presented to a very different group. At the National Accounting Institute, there was an audience of about 40 professionals, almost all from African countries and seconded from civil service posts. They were particularly attracted to the subject by the cross-cultural dimension.

I should have known the story because half my working life has been spent at Keele, the university founded by Michael’s father. Lindsay senior was both a distinguished academic leader at the University of Oxford for 20 years and a committed internationalist who stood as the Popular Front candidate in the Oxford by-election of 1938. By that time, Michael was in China, having travelled from Vancouver in late 1937. Dr Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon, was a passenger on the same boat. Bethune and Lindsay became friends, the former a committed communist and the latter a sceptic.

Like Dr Bethune, Michael is seen in China as a great example of international friendship. I initially came across Michael, lauded as “a true friend of China”, when I listened to President Xi’s London speech from 2015, given to an audience from both Houses of Parliament.

Michael wrote that he gave help “because it was clear that any thinking person had a duty to oppose the Japanese army”. He began by smuggling medicines and radio parts to the resistance forces. He imported a motorbike from Britain to travel around and, on occasion, his pillion passenger would be an activist who needed to make contact with the Communist underground in Beijing. During 1939 and 1940, Michael and Hsiao Li were developing a personal friendship based on political sympathy for the forces fighting against Japanese occupation. Both were inspired by concern for suffering rather than starting from a political manifesto. Being supporters of the anti-Japanese resistance movement took them close to the contemporary leaders of Chinese communism.

In the first hours after the news broke that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, Mr and Mrs Lindsay fled Yenching to avoid detention by the Kempeitai (Japanese military police) – the fate of almost all the staff at the university, including its president.

After driving about 50 miles from Beijing, the couple abandoned their car and walked to a safe area where the Chinese forces were in control. This took just over three weeks. They then made contact with the forces led by prominent military leader Nie Rongzhen.

Michael had mainly taught Economics at Yenching University, but it was his skill with radio communications that was the greatest help to the guerrilla forces. Hsiao Li explained the trust that was placed in Michael: “Michael met many dedicated people at the radio station. … Luckily, he had brought a test meter and a slide rule with him. … The army trusted Michael completely … he had been helping them since 1938.”

In the Jinchaji base area in the Hebei/Shanxi borderlands, Michael worked with General Nie (who was later Mayor of Beijing and then ran the Chinese nuclear weapons programme) to establish a two-year academic programme in wireless communications. There were 26 in the class; many later achieved high distinction in science in the PRC. In addition, Michael gave practical training to wireless operators.

Hsiao Li watches local troops communicate by radio. In the centre is the head of the local radio department. The sets were designed and built by Lindsay using whatever parts were available. Ji Jian district, Central Hubei province

In September 1943, with the Lindsays living in the village of Zhongbaicha in Hebei Province, there was news of another offensive. “The radio department hid all its equipment and when the offensive started in the middle of the month, we moved into the high mountains.” Weeks became months, as the fugitives sought refuge in one place after another, and crossings were made between Hebei and Shanxi. In her autobiography, Bold Plum: With the Guerrillas in China’s War Against Japan, Hsiao Li gives one of the chapters the title ‘Staying One Step Ahead of the Japanese’.

Eventually, Hsiao Li and Michael walked for three months with their baby, Erica, to Yan’an, the capital of the communist-controlled area. Life in the Communist capital was very different from the base area of Jinchaji. Although the city had been bombed by Japanese planes, it was relatively safe by 1944, with more supplies and much better facilities.

Shortly after their arrival, the Lindsays were entertained by Chairman Mao Zedong with “a magnificent feast”. He praised their courage, but Michael wanted action: “With nothing to do I became restless … we were invited to lunch with General Zhu De … I then went to his study to discuss my work and I was appointed technical adviser to the Eighteenth Group Army communications department.”

As technical adviser, Michael was able to build the first equipment that allowed the Communist capital to transmit internationally. Michael also became involved in writing and editing news stories for the New China News Agency.

After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, there were offers to stay in China, but the parents were concerned for the safety of their young family (by now there were two children). Moreover, Michael had seen his work as part of the Allied war effort; with the war over, he sought a new role as a source of first-hand information about the reality of the conflict in China.

Zhou Enlai arranged for US$3000 to be given to the family to help with their repatriation. Mao Zedong and his wife, Jiang Qing, hosted a private dinner for the Lindsays two days before their departure from Yan’an in November 1945. After three weeks of travel, the Lindsay family was able to reach Oxford, where Lord and Lady Lindsay welcomed them.

Michael Lindsay went on to become a distinguished scholar, spending most of his academic life as Professor of Far Eastern Studies at the American University in Washington DC. He died in 1994. After this, Hsiao Li spent most of the rest of her life in China as a guest of the Chinese government. She passed away in 2010.

Photos reproduced from boldplum.com, the website of Hsiao Li Lindsay’s autobiography, Bold Plum: With the Guerrillas in China’s War Against Japan

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The current blockbuster British Museum exhibition, China’s Hidden Century (1796-1912), runs till 8 October. For anyone with even the slightest interest in Chinese history, it’s a must, and indeed the numbers filing through the galleries indicate there’s a healthy appetite for the topic among Londoners and visitors to the city this summer. But what insights might those engaged in the often fraught and tricky world of doing business with China gain from the exhibition?

First off, the exhibition title. For those who know their Chinese history, the 19th century stretches from the elevation of the Jiaqing Emperor through to the fall of the 267-year-old dynasty and the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912. But those two seminal events, and all that came between – two Opium Wars, the colonial occupation of Hong Kong and the treaty port system, a 15-year-long civil war with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, a disastrous war with Japan, the Boxer Uprising, the reign of the Empress Dowager, and finally the Xinhai Revolution – are, by and large, not taught in UK schools. So, it’s a “hidden century” to the British, if not to the Chinese themselves.

The exhibition tells multiple stories of that long century for China. It was often one of waning prestige, military defeat, foreign interference and disruption, bringing hard times for many. But it was also a period of innovation and new technology, an encroaching modernity and, amid the negative interactions with the outside world, a time of cultural and technological transfer, too. There’s no avoiding Britain’s role in these processes. The single exhibit that has perhaps excited most interest among Chinese visitors features two pages, embossed with a black wax seal, the red chops of the emperor, and the signature of the British plenipotentiary in China, Henry Pottinger. This is the actual Treaty of Nanking, signed on board HMS Cornwallis on 29 August 1842, at the conclusion of the First Opium War which, among other onerous conditions, ceded control of the island of Hong Kong to the British for 155 years until 1997.

Britain’s role in the Opium Wars and its imperialist designs for China, including its imposition of extraterritoriality on treaty ports such as Shanghai, cannot be overlooked. These are historical truths and have long been and will remain a sore point in relations. Yet this is also a period when the business so many UK firms and individuals do with China today commences. It is the story of our commercial contact with China and of China’s with the outside world.

China’s Hidden Century aims to tell the big story of the Qing empire, its resistance to foes, both internal and external, its palace intrigues, and its battles for survival in a weakened and threatened position. But it is also the story of China’s multitudinous population, from its growing metropolises to its rural countryside to those who chose to leave to go overseas to make their fortunes or gain an education. It is the story of how modern innovation and technologies – from vibrant clothes dyes to iron-clad gunboats, from railways to photography – encroached on the lives and businesses of every Chinese person.

Take the emblematic poster for the exhibition (see first image in this article) – now to be seen on every tube station platform, bus shelter and billboard in London. It is a portrait of Lady Li, the wife of a successful Guangzhou businessman, Lu Xifu, painted around 1876. She appears stoical yet resolute, gazing directly at us across a century and a half. But the portrait is also stunningly realistic, the product of an artist (sadly anonymous) faced with the innovation of photography and its ability to capture real life. This is the very advent of the modern in Chinese life, and everything will change around Lady Li – from artistic styles to the city she inhabits as it expands rapidly over the course of her lifetime.

Portrait of Lu Xifu by unidentified artist, about 1876. Gift of Mr. Harp Ming Luk. With permission of Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada © ROM

Throughout the exhibition, we see the growth of the structural elements that anchor foreign business in China today: the initial growth of the Chinese rail system and logistics, the first engineering works and shipyards to encourage manufacturing, a modern banking system to support commerce and growth emerging, and a burgeoning Chinese business class looking to the world for ideas and inspiration, keen to establish their own domestic enterprises.

And ideas did enter China – from steamships to ply the coast, combustion engines to test China’s new roads, through to modern pharmaceuticals and stock markets. Despite internal disruption and foreign interference – beyond European imperialism, the disastrous 1894/1895 Sino-Japanese War presaged half a century of constant Japanese interference in Shandong, Manchuria and eventually all-out war – business did blossom and often flourish. Relationships were forged, and import and export markets were carved out.

Items for export are included in the exhibition – carved jade from Peking workshops, “Tientsin” rugs, ceramics from the dragon kilns at Jingdezhen, and the once prolific silverware from Guangzhou and Shanghai that made so many of the punch bowls and silver goblets for wealthy European and American dinner tables. Technological innovations rapidly adopted for local consumer product use are also on display, including a snuff bottle decorated with an almost photographic likeness of the Confucian statesman and Qing diplomat Li Hongzhang.

Li Hongzhang is perhaps the exhibition thread that most determines 19th-century China’s business and commercial development. A skilled negotiator, the suppressor of the Taiping Rebellion, and the founder of China’s first modern military academies, he is also a key figure in the so-called “Self-Strengthening Movement” that runs through this entire hidden century. The effects of this movement included treaties to regulate trade between China and the West, a modern customs system, taxation of foreign business, a serious study of new technology and (in a very contemporary move) the start of governmental assistance to Chinese entrepreneurs engaged in competition against foreign enterprise.

Snuff bottle with image of Li Hongzhang (1823–1901), Beijing, 1900-1910. © Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection. Photographed by Nick Moss

In 1865, Li created a “general bureau of machinery production”, ushering in domestic telegraph companies, shipyards, railway concerns, textile mills, printing works and manufacturers of everyday products. Li did much to foster a commercial milieu, a semblance of industrial policy and manufacturing industries still recognisable today.

We can also see the material culture of these developments in the exhibition, such as banknotes printed with cargo ships, factories and city streets, examples of bonds issued by the Qing state for the building of new railways and advertising for modern pharmaceuticals. All these developments led to expanded cities, better road and rail networks and modern ports – the very essential sinews of internal and external trade.

Perhaps ultimately, it was this very desire to “self-strengthen”, to place the modern alongside the traditional, that inaugurated the end of the long 19th century. It initiated the demise of the 267-year-old Qing Dynasty and the creation, after the establishment of the first Chinese republic, of the China we interact with today.

The China of the early years of the “hidden century” – the early 1800s – was one that would undergo dramatic change. The Guangzhou Lady Li was born into was a walled one of low-level housing and pagodas. By the time she sat for her portrait, it was to become a major international port, a bustling, ever-expanding city of commerce and trade. Tarmacadam roads were coming, railway tracks were soon to be laid and a grand station was to be built connecting directly to Hankow and Hong Kong. As she sat for the artist, anti-Qing rebellions that slightly predated the successful 1911 revolution were occurring around her. The change she must have witnessed was enormous – essentially a move from a China we now find hard to recognise and historically touch to one we can still regularly find traces of today and that still impacts our businesses and interactions.

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With such uncertainty at present, perhaps it’s a good time to look back on the history of Hong Kong. There have certainly been books about the city’s history before – but long-time Hong Kong resident and prolific author Vaudine England’s Fortune’s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong (Corsair Books), is different.

Not the long list of former Governors and colonial officials, but a peoples’ history of Hong Kong, England engagingly rediscovers and accentuates the multi-cultural history of the former colony, including, of course, the Chinese and British, but also the major contributions of the Portuguese, French, Armenians, Russian émigrés, Parsis, Indians and a host of other nationalities that have added to the city’s once legendary vibrancy. It is also a history of the entrepreneurs, those looking to get on through hard work, the refugees, exiles, the women and the long-forgotten who trudged across the border to make their lives anew …

Your history of Hong Kong is quite radically different to most previous attempts, emphasising ordinary working and entrepreneurial people over a long list of governors and officials. How long had this way of thinking about Hong Kong been bubbling away in your head?

This subject has probably been in gestation for about four decades, but the actual hard work took place alongside other research projects over the past decade. It all goes back, weirdly, to my parents’ friendship with the late great social historian Revd Carl T. Smith when they lived in Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Smith had this amazing and ever-growing collection of index cards in a pre-computer age, referring to just about any individual that ever entered any kind of record in Hong Kong.

Carl scoured newspaper birth/death/marriage notices, but he also spent years in Land Registry offices, legal offices, and public records offices compiling his mini-biographies of the real Hong Kong people. My work owes a huge debt to his work. In fact, any Hong Kong historian owes a debt to Carl Smith. His focus was on finding out who were actually the people of Hong Kong, where did they come from, how did they live, who did they marry and build families and homes with. It marked the beginning of what you might call a Hong Kong school of history – one led not by the narratives of Britain or of China, but by Hong Kong itself.

Your analysis is also far more multicultural than previous histories. But do you think that that early diversity in the former colony you describe – Parsis, Armenians, Portuguese, English, Chinese – is still an integral part of 21st century Hong Kong, or has that aspect been lost?

Descendants of those early families of such diverse origins do still live in Hong Kong. In particular, there are significant communities of Nepalese families (dating back to their forebears’ roles in the Gurkha regiments), as well as Muslim and Hindu groups. They remain marginalised, and perhaps more so than ever before, as Hong Kong becomes more populated and governed by mainland Chinese interests.

Many of Hong Kong’s diverse peoples have left over recent decades, primarily in search of a place of safety regarding passports and education. Some of them first realised the need for this when British Nationality laws separated out British nationality (a passport) from citizenship (the right to live in Britain). Others have since discovered, as one Indian tycoon put it: we were second-class citizens under the British, and now we are third-class.

You also stress the internal diaspora nature of Hong Kong – that it has always been a magnet for Chinese talent and entrepreneurs from southern China. Is Hong Kong still such a magnet of attraction now mainland China’s economy has grown so significantly? Does Hong Kong still offer opportunities to mainland Chinese?

Current Hong Kong government policies, strongly led by Beijing, stress the need for Hong Kong to integrate with what they now call the Greater Bay Area. At the same time, the Hong Kong government is openly struggling to attract talent in a wide range of fields, from medicine to law to education and construction. Some rules are being loosened to enable mainland Chinese and other providers of such skills to enter the labour force in Hong Kong more easily.

It’s an open question whether Hong Kong represents the same route to a wider world once aspired to by young mainlanders, but it seems safe to assume that people will go where there are jobs and money to be made. Behind this policy puzzle is, of course, the fact that hundreds of thousands of educated and professional Hong Kong people have left in recent years in search of a better home abroad.

Fortune’s Bazaar also looks at the role of Cantonese in Hong Kong – as a language, culture, cuisine and beyond. But we’ve seen the marginalisation of some non-Mandarin language cultures, for instance, Shanghainese. What do you think is the medium- to long-term future for Cantonese now the drive towards Mandarin appears so strong and perhaps will become overwhelming?

I remember my profound shock back in the 1990s when one of my favourite editors – Fred Armentrout – suggested that Cantonese could become an endangered language. I did not believe him then, but as usual, he was prescient. I recall when the Cantonese in Guangzhou protested so vociferously when attempts were made to switch the main language of the evening television news to Mandarin/Putonghua. So far, Hong Kong still has two official languages — English and Chinese — but certainly, many more jobs now in Hong Kong required people to be at least bilingual — Putonghua and Cantonese — if not trilingual, with English. Having said that, it’s hard to imagine ever quelling the irrepressible wit and power of the Cantonese and their language.

Women, too, are shown to play a far more important role in Hong Kong’s development in your book. Hong Kong appears to be a place where historically, women could thrive to a greater extent than on the mainland. Is this still applicable in 2023?

Back in the mid-19th century, there were horrendous laws for women, such as the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, which required any woman servicing foreign men to undergo regular, invasive physical examinations, and then to be locked up until any infection had burned out. That was a serious downside to the colonial regime’s insistence on keeping their sailors clear of venereal disease.

On the other hand, some quirks of British laws, specifically those against slavery, enabled some working women from China to escape the clutches of the men (sometimes their relatives) who had trafficked them into Hong Kong. Moreover, the profession of brothel-keeper gave an early chance to some women to actually become CEOs – they had responsibilities under the law but also rights, which were unimaginable back across the border in China. Some progress has been made, of course, and the range of professions now open to women in Hong Kong has expanded exponentially. But they remain under-represented on company boards, subject to sexual harassment, not paid the same as male colleagues and much more.

Lastly, since the mid-19th century, Hong Kong has been, as you stress, first and foremost a port – a place for ideas and peoples to enter and leave as much as goods. Does Hong Kong still have a future as a port, as a “transmission belt” for ideas and innovation as much as for goods in container ships?

Does a port city need to be free to allow for the transmission of ideas as much as goods? Indeed, that is the question I plan to tackle next.

Some friends in Hong Kong now argue that while the freedom of speech, assembly and expression has gone, and the rule of law has been fundamentally altered, it’s no problem as the ships still sail and planes still fly, so never mind. Others say that Hong Kong’s struggle to staff its companies right now clearly shows that without the openness of exchange, a city starts to die; without any challenge, a government becomes inefficient; without alternative views and ways of operating, the innovation central to any port is quashed.

The question is whether such free ideas and peoples are integral to a port city or not — are they the cake or simply the icing on the cake? I plan to take a look at several different port cities to try to answer this question and I’ll let you know when I’m done!

The post Is Hong Kong still a thriving multicultural city? appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

In this third instalment, Unilever reflects on using cutting-edge R&D to develop products that not only benefit the lives of Chinese consumers but have also been adopted around the world.

How and when did Unilever enter the Chinese market?

Unilever first came to China early in 1923, when we established the largest soap factory in the Far East in Shanghai – 2023 marks the 100th year since Unilever’s investment in China. We were also among the first batch of multinationals to enter the Chinese market after reform and opening up in the 1980s. Over the past century, Unilever has grown alongside the Chinese people, providing products and services to its 1.4 billion consumers, and witnessed and contributed to the development of the country’s consumer goods industry. We are devoted to delivering a  better life to people around the world.

What achievements and developments has Unilever enjoyed in China?

To date, we have invested more than $3 billion in China. Over the past 30 years, we have set up our North Asia Headquarters and one of our global R&D centres in Shanghai, established eight production bases, and operated more than 40 well-known brands in China, providing cleaning and health products and services to more than 150 million households. Today, China has become one of our top three key global growth markets.

Below are some of the achievements we are most proud of in specific sectors:

R&D and Innovation
In 2009 we launched our sixth global R&D centre in Shanghai, with an investment of over $100 million and a staff of nearly 400 R&D personnel from 12 nations. Backed by its huge R&D manpower reserves and the world’s most cutting-edge R&D facilities and experimental equipment, the Shanghai R&D centre has achieved a great wealth of patented technologies and R&D outcomes and developed many innovative local products that have been a hit with Chinese consumers. Many of the centre’s achievements have been recognised and adopted in foreign markets.

Regenerate toothpaste products developed by Unilever’s Shanghai R&D centre

For example, after ten years of research, the Shanghai R&D team launched a groundbreaking new product in the toothpaste industry, Regenerate NR5TM, a bio-mineralisation technology that can repair enamel minerals.

Intelligent Manufacturing
Unilever has a complete industrial layout in China, with eight production bases and logistics centres across the country and large comprehensive production bases placed in the eastern Yangtze River Delta region, the northern Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region, the western Tianfu New Area, and the southern Pearl River Delta region. We are continuing to improve the flexibility and efficiency of our supply chain by upgrading our digital and intelligent capabilities. To date, three of our factories in China have been recognised by the World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network.

Zero Carbon Vision
Driving superior performance with purpose-led, future-fit business is the Unilever Compass. It is our goal to achieve high-quality and sustainable growth. Over the years, we have worked actively with upstream and downstream partners to help improve the health of the planet, improve people’s health, confidence, and well-being, and contribute to a fairer and more socially inclusive world. For example, our Hefei HB factory and the Truliva factory in Ningbo received “Six-star Zero-carbon Factory” certification, while the “Go Green Go Lux” project has been protecting the Sanjiangyuan region and improving the lives of the residents for more than 10 years.

What are your thoughts and reflections on the Chinese market today?

The once-in-a-century changes we are facing today are putting pressure on the globalisation of multinational companies, but China’s actions in further opening up its market and improving the business environment have given confidence to the multinational companies operating in the country.

Unilever has been serving Chinese consumers for 100 years, and we are starting off our next 100 years with determination and careful planning; our commitment to the Chinese market won’t change due to short-term changes in the environment. Multinational companies are an important part of China’s reform and opening up. Using foreign investment to promote development is one of the country’s national policies.

What are Unilever’s ambitions and plans for the future in China?

Unilever is continuing to expand its industrial layout in China. In 2022, we completed the construction of the RMB 1 billion Taicang ice cream factory. In the same year, we began the construction of a new factory in Guangzhou. With nearly RMB 2 billion invested, the Guangzhou factory will be our first full-category production base in China, covering the production of personal care products, food, and ice cream. Relying on the geographical advantage of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, it will satisfy internal demands and supply overseas markets when completed.

Moreover, in responding to China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, we will carry out more environment-friendly projects to help improve the health of the planet. Sustainability will continue to be a principle we follow throughout the whole process of our business, and we will continue to embrace digital and innovative technologies to provide a better consumer experience and create bigger value for the industry.

Unilever’s Hefei Industrial Park has been recognised by the World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network

What do you think China will look like in 50 years?

As mentioned in the report of the 20th Party Congress, China aims to achieve socialist modernisation by 2035. As China heads towards this encouraging goal, Unilever is starting a new 100 years in the country. The future ahead will be a picture of Unilever and China walking and growing together. We will remain committed to the Chinese market and, more importantly, do our part to contribute to its modernisation drive.

With the disruption of 2022 now behind us, the China-Britain Business Council is excited to share the newly confirmed dates for our celebration of 50 years of UK-China Ambassadorial Relations dinner receptions in Beijing and Shanghai.

The Beijing dinner reception will be held on Tuesday 21 March 2023 at the Intercontinental Sanlitun and will be attended by senior officials from China’s central government, ministries, and regulators along with municipal and provincial leaders. Learn more about the dinner in Beijing here.

The Shanghai dinner reception will be held on Tuesday 28 March 2023 at Intercontinental Jing’an and will be attended by senior representatives from municipal and adjacent provincial government organisations.

The dinner receptions are an ideal opportunity for our members to engage with CBBC’s network of senior contacts in both the Chinese and UK Governments as well as key local enterprises.

The post In conversation with Unilever: 100 years in the China market appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Chinese tenacity runs deep. If you go back, 100 years or so, doubters might more readily settle for this verdict. It was one I resolutely reached as the aftermath of writing my first historic novel, Yang’s War.

It is perhaps hardly surprising that a now indisputably supreme world power would have little appetite for reflecting on less prestigious past times. Less still once humiliation corrupts the memory. I hesitate to quote Churchill, yet “the farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see” seems rather apposite in this context.

I am no historian on all matters Chinese, but delving ever deeper in writing Yang’s War I became addicted to the blatant determination of a people hell-bent on revival. In the face of adversity, at a level unthinkable to many others in their own histories, the story of the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) in World War I is nothing less than awe-inspiring.

How why and when China, a vulnerable fledgling republic, came to take part in WWI is a cautionary conundrum if nothing else. As the largest labour force anywhere in WWI, it is nothing less than astonishing that WWI history has remained muted about them being there at all let alone the difference they ultimately made to the outcome of that war. How it transpired that upwards of 140,000 souls were involved merits closer scrutiny.

News blackout

Under siege from various, then, greater powers, China was not ready to roll over and accept its fate. Japan had jumped the gun and joined the Allies before China could even blink. With Japan’s blatant ambition for German-held territory in Shandong, China began privately knocking on Britain’s door offering support. Even though they could simply have sat back, keeping well away from a perilous conflict that had nothing to do with them, nothing was further from their minds. Gambling the Allies would prevail, China had to be there, at the table, alongside Japan, averting any further “carving up” of their homeland. Rejection after rejection came from Britain, yet China never gave up. Having offered troops, to no avail, labour was promised. This was a shrewd change of tack. Coolies had a proven record with foreign powers yet still, the rejections came, and still, their efforts never faltered. As the greatest colonial power, Britain had a reputation for unrivalled access to foreign support in wartime. It also had its powerful Trade Unions to counter should any suggestion of pay for foreign labour raise its head. Then everything changed.

As the Somme inflicted unprecedented attrition on British troops, British attitudes changed, and China’s persistence paid off at last. Britain needed manpower, and China remained ready to oblige. Yet how could such an immense operation remain covert to allow Britain to keep face and avoid the obstruction of doubting politicians and vociferous Unions?

Chinese recruits being fingerprinted

With both Britain and China carrying their own burdensome reasons for keeping their deal under wraps, secrecy was ingeniously secured. To preserve their declared “neutrality”, dodging the prying eyes of both Germany and Japan, China agreed to private recruitment agencies on Chinese soil, while Britain and France offered written contracts for non-combatant paid engagements. This was a commercial arrangement.

Getting the CLCs to France, however, proved to be much more challenging. The initial transportation across the seas quickly fell victim to ruthless German U-boat attacks. The sinking of The Athos, condemning the lives of hundreds of CLCs trapped in the hold, forced a change of plan. Now the entire width of Canada by rail provided the new route. With Canada’s reluctant consent, the inhumane transport of Chinese labour began in earnest. Insisting on locked carriages throughout the week-long trip became an extreme trial of human endurance. Secured within, closeted from view, thwarted any attempts to escape, the CLC were covertly on their way, by hook or by crook.

The mayhem of war … and the confusion within

As the greatest human conflict in the history of war dragged on, the intended separation of labour from combatant troops became ever blurred. The onset of Spanish Flu took its own toll on all participants, as did German firepower. With the front line ever-depleting, skilled Allied troops were redeployed to close-quarter combat. With the new tank depots left wanting, it swiftly became apparent there were many skilled men amongst the CLC recruits, not least the protagonist of my book. Yang, as an interpreter who was near-fluent in English, poignantly represents the archetypal “saviour” for the suddenly under-manned British tank and munitions units. Urgently needing both mechanical skills and a fluent foreign tongue, such resourceful Chinese recruits as Yang soon came to run these depots.

Author Clive Harvey beside a grave in a cemetary for Chinese workers in Noyelles-sur-Mer in northern France

Having already out-performed all other trench-digging teams, the CLCs were now proving their worth in the combatant’s own backyard. By the Battle of Cambrai, this was invaluable, yet no accolade came. So it was that the presence of the Chinese diaspora on the killing fields of WWI became, and remained, the untold truth about The Great War. Untold because both sides had set out to keep it that way. Sustained because the brutal exclusion of China from the spoils of war at Versailles left a festering wound that wouldn’t heal.

If anyone, back then, had any doubts about the tenacity of the Chinese people, I doubt few have any now. It doesn’t just run deep; it has long been a simple case of DNA. No other conclusion registers for me now.

All WW1 photographs from the W J HAWKINGS collection courtesy of his grandson John de Lucy

The post Britain’s hidden debt to the Chinese in WWI appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Former president Jiang Zemin passed away in Shanghai on 30 November 2022 at the age of 96. He was given a state funeral in Beijing on the morning of Tuesday, 6 December, marked by the sounding of air raid sirens in cities across the country and a three-minute silence in Hong Kong.

British Ambassador to China, Caroline Wilson DCMG, attended the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday, 4 December to sign the official book of condolence on behalf of the UK, writing: “My sincere condolences on the death of former president Jiang Zemin this week. He welcomed our Late Queen Elizabeth II to Shanghai during her State Visit to China in 1986, and became the first serving Chinese leader to visit the UK in 1999. His passing is a great loss to the people of China.”

Like Queen Elizabeth II, Jiang was born in 1926, and was Party Secretary and Mayor of Shanghai when he met her in the city in 1986. Just a few years after the queen’s visit, he went on to become general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989 to 2002, then president of China from 1993 to 2003.

Jiang’s tenure witnessed unprecedented economic growth in China and saw the country “enter the world”, culminating in it joining the World Trade Organisation in December 2001. He frequently engaged with foreign leaders both at home and abroad – often in a more spontaneous, personal manner than his predecessors or successors – including a four-day state visit to the UK in October 1999.

During the state visit, Jiang attended a CBBC-organised business lunch at the Banqueting House in Whitehall and met then CBBC President Sir Charles Powell.

CBBC President Sir Charles Powell with President Jiang Zemin in London, October 1999

Jiang’s visit to the UK came soon after the handover ceremony marking Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty from the UK to China in 1997, which Jiang attended alongside Prince Charles, representing Queen Elizabeth, and then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Images: Alamy, CBBC

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In late 2021, two Ming dynasty terracotta clay figurines returned to China after residing in a private collection in the United States for nearly a century. The figurines were presented to the Shanghai Museum for inclusion in their collection of 66 similar Ming dynasty figurines, which owner Suzanne Fratus had seen at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 1983 when they were on loan from the Shanghai Museum.

Fratus’ grandfather, John Herbert Waite, who was an ophthalmologist and spent some time working in Asia, was gifted the figurines by a Chinese patient whom he cured. He returned to the United States with them in his possession in the early 1900s, and the figurines were passed down through the family to Fratus, who decided to return them to China via the Chinese consulate-general in San Francisco in April 2021.

The return of the figures, which was facilitated by the freight forwarding specialists at CBBC member company Heighten, is not just a story of cultural appreciation across borders; it also sheds light on the unique skills needed to ship fine art and artefacts across borders.

“The list of specific challenges when shipping cultural artefacts is very long,” says James Grayland, Heighten’s International Director. Beyond obvious requirements like making sure items are properly packaged so they don’t get damaged in transit, there can be multiple layers of bureaucratic and communication-related hoops to jump through when transferring art or artefacts to and from China.

Suzanne Fratus’ clay figurines ready to be returned to China. Source: Heighten

Museum objects, for example, are usually national property, requiring permits at the national and local levels, which, in recent years, have typically been issued very close to the time of shipment. In addition, objects over 100 years old like the clay figurines in this story are treated as antiquities under the jurisdiction of the National Cultural Heritage Administration (part of China’s Ministry of Culture & Tourism), meaning that they need to be handled differently to modern art, for example.

In addition, Grayland notes that there can often be a significant cultural gap. “The level of transparency on the ground handling process or with China customs is lacking,” he says. “Furthermore, often fine arts teams do not have regular customs interaction, meaning their depth of knowledge can be lacking, combined with possible language barriers and a lack of understanding of norms in other countries.”

As a result, communication is key. “Like many projects involving China, the key is to build relationships across all the stakeholders, and where possible and applicable, to open up communications across all those parties,” says Grayland. “What we find is that chains of communications traditionally are just that, ‘chains’.” Communications move back and forth between single points of contact, but this can be very inefficient. Instead, Heighten focuses on creating broader networks of relationships from the get-go, so that “as the pressure increases, communications are much more effective and the level of trust & understanding higher. Likewise, there are much better lines of communication across all stakeholders, who, if necessary, can develop smaller expert groups to work on specific technicalities.”

As with most interactions with China these days, one of the major challenges Heighten is having to work with is Covid-19. “The majority of the projects we worked on before required courier supervision end to end. For large exhibitions this can be a governmental and insurance-based prerequisite,” Grayland explains. Of course, China’s strict quarantine requirements under the ongoing zero Covid policy now mean that end-to-end supervision by a single individual is not possible.

“Due to this we have been helping clients by offering a bookend courier solution, where our team can step in and meet the shipment, then carry out due diligence and monitoring of the exhibits in place of their own team,” says Grayland. “This is an exciting new area for us, however it does create new dynamics and requires very clear communications and agreement on expectations between the multitude of different parties involved.”

Get immediate access to the China market with Launchpad, CBBC’s flagship market entry service. Call +44 (0)20 7802 2000 or email enquiries@cbbc.org now to find out more.

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Adam Brookes is a former BBC Beijing correspondent who then turned his hand to writing China-set spy fiction with the trilogy Night Heron, Spy Games and The Spy’s Daughter. Most of his journalistic career has been spent in and around China with stints in Afghanistan, North Korea and Mongolia after initially studying Chinese at SOAS.

Now, Brookes has written a well-researched and thrilling history of the intrepid curators who saved the treasures of the Forbidden City during World War II. It’s a tale of Indiana Jones-like daring-do mixed with an account of the amazing artworks that were preserved. And there’s a British angle too. Paul French caught up with Brookes to talk about Fragile Cargo: China’s Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City (Penguin Random House).

What was the “spark” for this story?

Simply that no full English language account exists. Many books about the period reference the fact that a significant part of the imperial art collections – resident in the Forbidden City for hundreds of years – were crated up and evacuated from Peking in 1933. But very little detail is available in English as to exactly how and why it was done and the enormous effect it has had on some of the most important art ever created, anywhere. In Chinese, wonderful accounts, full of texture and atmosphere and characters, are available, and I thought it was time someone rendered them into English. In addition, the last two eyewitnesses to these events – as far as I am aware – were very elderly, and time was running out to interview them.

It’s often assumed that the Forbidden City and its treasures were only opened to the public after 1949 but, as you show, it was in fact much earlier. Can you run us through what happened and how the Forbidden City became public property and its treasures catalogued?

The first gallery to open to the public in the imperial precincts opened its doors in 1914! It was small and access was limited. It was known as the ‘Gallery of Antiquities’, or sometimes as the ‘Government Museum’. But the full Forbidden City and its art collections opened later. The last emperor, Pu Yi, was evicted from the Forbidden City in November 1924 by a warlord, Feng Yuxiang, who had seized control of Peking. A month later, in the cold of a Peking December, teams of professors, art historians and officials fanned out through the palaces and began to inventory every piece of art they found. They inventoried 1.17 million objects. The resulting catalogue ran to 28 volumes. Many of those on the inventory teams went on to oversee the opening of the Forbidden City to the public and the establishment of the Palace Museum on 10 October 1925. It was the central cultural institution of the Republic of China.

Some of the treasures within the Forbidden City made their way on loan to London in 1935 for the International Exhibition of Chinese Art at the Royal Academy. It was what we might now call a “blockbuster exhibition”. What was displayed in London and how important was that exhibition in generating interest in Chinese art in Britain?

About a thousand pieces from the Forbidden City made their way to London aboard a Royal Navy County class cruiser, HMS Suffolk, in 1935. Among them were important landscape paintings dating back to the Song period (960-1279), rare porcelain and ancient bronze vessels. The general public in Europe was accustomed to seeing some Chinese porcelain, as well as Chinese ‘curios’, small collectible objects like carvings or snuff bottles. But these masterpieces of landscape painting and calligraphy, exquisite imperial porcelain, beautiful works in jade – all this was new to the European viewer. The exhibition created a sensation. It lent momentum to the study of Chinese art in Europe and the United States, and it created public sympathy for the young, fragile Republic of China that faced such a huge threat from Japan.

As concerns over a Japanese invasion of China grew, various elements of the Forbidden City’s collections went to Shanghai, Nanjing, Chongqing, Xi’an, Kunming, and elsewhere. Who made the decisions on where to send the art for safeguarding and where did it end up?

It was a haphazard, sometimes chaotic process. The central bureaucracy of the Republic of China had its own ideas about which locations were suitable for safe storage of the imperial collections for the duration of the war – some of them not very good at all. In the end, the Palace Museum’s Board of Directors decided where the art would go, and took guidance from the museum’s director, Ma Heng. The art, meticulously packed in 20,000 wooden cases, travelled by steamship, by rail and by truck, and sometimes on shoulder-poles toted by porters, for thousands of miles into west China, far from the front line in China’s war with Japan, but always within range of Japanese bombers. Ma Heng sought out caves, temples and ancestral halls in quiet villages in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces where he stored the art for the war years in the fraught hope that it would be safe from thieves, damp, insects and Japanese bombs.

I know you’ve talked about how China’s participation in the Second World War is a bit of a black hole for many British readers. Are you hoping this book can partly address that gap in our knowledge?

In Fragile Cargo, I have tried to locate the story of the art treasures very firmly in the context of China’s Second World War. I want the reader to understand what Chinese people went through, and the scale and monstrous nature of the war in China. Something in the order of 20 million Chinese people perished in the war between 1937 and 1945. The Republic of China was an ally of the US and the UK and was the only state in East Asia to hold out against the Japanese invasion. Yet this theatre of war is almost completely ignored in English language histories of World War II. It’s just absent from any popular understanding of what took place in those frightful years. Many historians are taking fresh approaches to the historiography of World War II, and I wrote Fragile Cargo in the hope that I can, in some small way, persuade the reader to think afresh about the scale and scope of the War.

Can you talk a little about how perhaps Britain helped in the race to save China’s treasures and their recovery after World War II?

The British were instrumental in the story in two important ways. First, in late 1937, nearly 20,000 cases of art languished in the then capital, Nanjing, even as Japanese bombs fell and Japanese troops and tanks approached the city’s walls. The Palace Museum curators were desperate to evacuate the cases from Nanjing to safety and had only days to do so, but lacked funds or any means of transportation. A deft bureaucrat named Han Li Wu approached the board of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund and secured loans, and a British official of China’s Customs Service turned those loans into cash to pay porters, truck drivers and steamship operators.

Second, many of the steamships the museum chartered to transport the cases of art up the Yangtze river were owned by Butterfield and Swire and crewed by British officers. Their neutrality at the time lent some protection from Japanese attack. There are some wonderful reminiscences from crusty Scottish steamship captains remembering how they loaded thousands of cases of irreplaceable, invaluable art aboard their ships day and night as Japanese bombs fell around them and the Japanese closed in on Nanjing. Seventeen thousand cases of art were evacuated from Nanjing, the last cases leaving only ten days before the city fell to the Japanese with appalling consequences. Without that British assistance, the imperial collections might never have made it out to safety.

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