How did you end up writing a book about scents?

I read Alain Corbin’s book [The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination] and thought it was something really fascinating. I was inspired. Before I started this project, I hadn’t paid much attention to smells, but I was intrigued as to how smells triggered memories and emotions and engaged with historical events in modern China.

Why do you think there has been such a surge in smell-related publications recently?

When I started studying the subject 12 years ago, it wasn’t a particularly popular subject. The study of sensory experiences and cultures started a few decades ago, but today this surge of smell studies is in part thanks to Covid-19. There is a strong correlation with people’s experience of Covid as many people lost their sense of smell – including myself when I was writing this book – and we also felt isolated without much human contact and interaction. We suddenly came to know how it felt living in a world without smell and other sensory input from interacting with others.

Why have there been so few publications on scent in China?

Sensory study is still quite Eurocentric, a Western-focused field that started in North America, and China has been a little bit slow in catching up. Chinese language publications so far are more focused on historical Chinese incense culture and are mainly descriptive. So I wouldn’t say there aren’t publications in China, they just have a different kind of approach and haven’t reached an international readership.

What are the main takeaways of your book?

My book is a cultural and social history of smell in China. I start with the eighteenth century by focusing on the perfume culture in everyday life. Then I trace modern environmental deodorization and the perfume industry, which changed our perception of bodily odour and our threshold of olfactory tolerance. I also look at the Mao era and propaganda language, which uses smell as a tool for political purposes. Certainly, it’s not just Mao who has used smell language this way; it’s also seen in other cultures – Christian texts describe paradise as fragrant whilst hell is evil and stinky. It’s quite universal to use olfactory metaphors to understand moral dichotomies. But in Mao’s case, he’s exceptionally good at using the kind of vivid language that everybody can relate to. If you say, ‘this class enemy is really stinky’, then for the masses, for people who are not highly educated, they can relate to that.

There has been something of a boom in the modern fragrance industry in China, why do you think that is?

I think Covid is an important trigger to that surge. China had a very strict lockdown, and people felt a need to find connectivity. Subconsciously they regarded smell as a way to connect. But at the more conscious level, people found lockdown boring; selfcare and home care became a higher priority for them. Burning incense and using home scents and diffusers really helped cope with lockdown, and the trend seems to have stayed as people continued to work from home more.

What about personal scent products? Has that evolved much in the last few years?

Definitely. You could argue Covid kickstarted it, as the joke was that when people were wearing masks, they didn’t need to wear lipsticks, so instead, they started to wear perfume. But overall, I think it’s related to the growing confidence of Chinese consumers in terms of finding diversity and their own identity. Beyond visible physical appearance, they seek more subtle self-expression through scents and perfumes.

Some people wear Chanel No. 5 or those iconic brands for status, and they are still selling very well. But a younger generation of consumers want to have their own identity by developing new consumer trends, tastes and preferences. The current Chinese perfume market reflects this changing landscape.

As China’s perfume culture is a much newer phenomenon, is China’s smellscape more open to new influences than the Western smellscape?

Since China’s perfume consumers are predominantly younger generations of society, they are perhaps more open to innovative and creative perfume types, but Chinese consumers are still attracted to smells they have had cultural and physical connections with. In my chapter about the 1930s Chinese perfume industry, I explained why Chinese manufacturers used a lot of indigenous fragrances, such as osmanthus, jasmine and magnolia. It was not only for the purpose of keeping costs down but also because consumers’ familiarity with these fragrances boosted sales. Physical exposure to a certain scent certainly attracts people to it. Traditional or indigenous Chinese smells are still very much relevant to consumer trends today.

What are the more popular scents in the Chinese market?

Dongfangxiang, or Oriental fragrances. There are approximately six categories. Japanese Yuzu, the concept of using grapefruit or citrus, is very popular now, not only in the perfume sector, but also in the culinary industry too. Chinese traditional floral fragrances from plants like osmanthus, magnolia and gardenia are also very high up the list. These are even used in flavoured coffees in China.

Other categories include Chinese herbal medicine, such as Xiangfuzi, and, unsurprisingly, woody smells, such as popular sandalwood. Then tea flavours are certainly favoured, though it’s difficult to distil essences from tea leaves. Most surprising is fungal fragrances. Of course, the Chinese like mushrooms such as the Mu’er and the Matsutake mushroom, but it’s hard to imagine how they smell in a perfume.

Is the Chinese fragrance industry a female-led industry?

We traditionally associate fragrance to women but in Chinese literati culture, the art of incense is predominantly a male skill for Confucian scholars to master. During the Song Dynasty, scholars compiled manuals of incense called Xiang Pu, explaining how to make and mix incense. But in the contemporary era, male scents are mostly limited to middle class office workers, although Gen Z consumers will buy perfumes as part of the package of their identity.

The three big Chinese brands everyone knows are Documents, Melt Season and To Summer, why do you think they do well?

These brands have great narratives about their products. At the To Summer store they have a story around each product. A few lines of poetry echo the name of the fragrance. Even the fragrance notes are not just lemon, apple and so on, but are described as something like “the morning sunshine shining through the skin”. So they give you a concept of how you feel it. I think this kind of narrative is very important for Chinese consumers. Also, they pay careful attention to the packaging – the bottle, the stopper, and the box are tastefully designed, making these brands very giftable. The things beyond the perfume – the aesthetic value, the experience and so on – are components of a unique identity, which appeals to the taste of young Chinese consumers.

Find out more about the Chinese fragrance market at CBBC’s latest China Chat on 16 May 2024

For anyone with a nose for the next big thing in the beauty industry, China’s fragrance market has a scent of opportunity that is hard to miss. China’s perfume market is projected to grow to £3.7 billion by 2025, a noteworthy increase from £1.5 billion in 2021. The fragrance sector in the Middle Kingdom is exploding with opportunities for new product development and new customer acquisition, as well as intriguing brand collaborations and lucrative tie-ups.

Huang Xuelei will join branding consultant Julie Shah and Elisa Harca, Co-Founder & Asia CEO, Red Ant Asia, at China Chat to share strategic insights on working in and with the Chinese fragrance market for UK brands.

Click here to register

The post Huang Xuelei discusses her new book, Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

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

The post The British man who helped the Communists fight Japan appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

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.

The post Doing Business in China’s Hidden Century appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

In this second instalment, we speak to David Guo, Chief Executive Officer of Schroder Investment Management in China, about opportunities for investment in a post-Covid China in 2023 and beyond.

Can you please tell us how and when Schroders entered the China market?

We set up our first representative office in Mainland China in Shanghai in 1994. Over the past nearly 30 years, we have adopted a systematic approach to business development in the Chinese market. First, we have leveraged our strengths as a global asset manager to meet diversified investment needs in the local market. Secondly, we have made continuous efforts to explore and develop our business scope and investment capabilities in China and provide Chinese investors with one-stop wealth management services. As one of the first international asset managers to enter the Chinese market, we have always actively responded to China’s financial opening-up policy and built strengths in relevant business segments.

As early as the 1860s, the firm of J. Henry Schroder & Co. was trading in tea and silk from China and was providing financial services for clients who had import and export business with China

What major successes and growth have you had during this time?

Despite the uncertainty that has shrouded the international financial market in recent years, Schroders has made some major progress in the China market. In February 2022, we set up our second joint venture with Bank of Communications, Schroder BOCOM Wealth Management Co., Ltd. As the third Chinese-foreign joint-venture wealth management company in China, this marked our formal foray into the bank wealth management market and wealth management services in China.

In January 2023, we were pleased to receive the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s approval for the establishment of our wholly-owned public fund management company (FMC), which is currently in steady progress with business preparation before regulatory onsite inspection. The WFOE FMC will allow us to deliver our global strengths in China in a complete manner.

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

In the short term, we expect to see signs of China’s economic recovery in its economic data for the first half of 2023. Structurally, domestic demand (real estate and its industrial chain, as well we consumer goods and services) may replace exports as the primary driver of economic growth. With the rise in global interest rates expected to be near an end, we believe that global capital will flow back to emerging markets, China being an appealing region among them.

In the medium and long term, we expect that China will shift from scale-based growth to high-quality growth. In recent years, the government has put a lot of effort into to guiding the economy towards high-quality growth. This will be a long process that requires patience, but we have seen many positive signs.

Considering China’s lead over Europe and the US in the current economic cycle (China is recovering amid recessions in Europe and the US in the first half of this year), we expect global capital to flow back into China and drive the valuation recovery of Chinese stocks. Manufacturing upgrading and domestic demand recovery are the most promising directions in our view.

We believe that the commitment to and intensity of emissions reduction, especially in developed economies, should not be underestimated, and that a decline in demand for relevant equipment may not materialise next year as expected. Manufacturing upgrading is crucial for China’s entry into high-income countries and is also in line with China’s policy guidance. Domestic demand recovery mainly refers to the real estate industrial chain and consumer services, where relevant industries have just started their recovery journey with more accommodative policies.

How has CBBC supported you or British businesses during this time?

CBBC has always been a valuable source of help and support for our business development in China and has witnessed our rapid growth in the market. In the context of China’s significantly accelerated financial opening-up, CBBC has actively approached us to find out more about our vision for business development in China and the challenges that we may face, and has helped facilitate our communication with China’s regulators and government officials and enhance the trust and mutual rapport between British companies and the Chinese government.

In addition, CBBC has organised roundtable dialogues on topics of importance for the Chinese government, such as pensions and ESG. Such occasions provide an opportunity for us to share our inputs while also allowing us to be better informed about China’s regulatory developments and approaches so that we can plan our business accordingly to be better aligned with China’s strategic development goals at the national level.

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

Schroders is a financial institution with a history of more than 200 years that has always stayed abreast of the times. With China’s continued financial opening-up, we will leverage the synergy of our multiple onshore business units to provide more investment options for overseas markets and the Chinese market and bring new investment concepts and products to Chinese investors.

First, we are eager to bring more overseas experience to China and evaluate the elasticity and value of China assets from a global perspective. Secondly, we will draw upon our global investment research network and investor relations platform to provide global asset allocation help for domestic investors. Thirdly, as a sustainable investing pioneer, Schroders has a proprietary sustainability assessment framework and tools, and has embedded ESG considerations throughout the investment process. We look to share our experience and specialised knowledge with our partners in China and conduct further dialogues and cooperation with them on ESG best practices, investment strategies, and products.

It merits noting that we are encouraged by the launch of China’s personal pension plan and by China’s determination to establish a robust pension product market. Pension investment is also a key field prioritised by Schroders in China. We will leverage our rich experience gained from managing pension products in overseas markets to play a constructive role in the development of China’s pension fund ecosystem. We are strongly positioned to serve China’s third pillar pension market through our China offices.

We have confidence in the growth of the Chinese market, which has always been a high-priority market for Schroders. Here, we will continue to step up our presence and bring more of our global resources and strengths for the development of China’s asset management industry.

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 Schroders Investment Management appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

In this first instalment, we speak to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) about being ‘In China, for China’, promoting Sino-British cultural exchange through its charitable fund, and how CBBC has helped along the way.

How and when did JLR enter the China market and what major successes and growth have you had during this time?

Since entering China in 2010, we’ve been committed to providing high-quality products and services for local consumers with a long-term ‘In China, for China’ commitment, and an ‘In China, for the world’ mission – and won the favour of over a million Chinese customers.

In 2012 we established the joint venture Chery Jaguar Land Rover, and in 2014, formally built our first vehicle manufacturing plant outside the UK in Changshu [pictured in lead image], which set records when it produced five domestic models and 300,000 engines in just three years. It also won the “National Green Factory” award from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for its sustainable energy management and initiatives.

The Chinese market contributes an important role to global business growth. In the past two years, despite external factors, it still manages to account for more than a quarter of our global sales. We aim to become the creator of the world’s most desirable luxury vehicles and services for the most discerning of customers, and through innovative products and services, have built a full-chain modern luxury journey for Chinese consumers. This includes more than 10 new models, such as the New Range Rover, New Range Rover Sport, and New Land Rover Defender 130. In services, the J.D. Power China Customer Service Index (CSI) ranked Land Rover second for four consecutive years, reflecting consumer recognition of JLR’s high-quality services.

In 2014, JLR China also established the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation Jaguar Land Rover China Children & Youth Dream Fund, the first of its kind in China’s auto industry. The fund promotes Sino-British cultural exchange and CSR with a total investment of nearly 100 million RMB, benefiting more than 600,000 young people.

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

We remain confident in the long-term growth of the Chinese economy and the luxury car market. We’ll continue our focus on building the most desirable experience for the most discerning customers, and accomplish this by taking advantage of our innovative strengths in local R&D, purchasing, manufacturing and more to drive global development through the Chinese market as the business growth engine.

How has CBBC supported you or British businesses during your time in China?

CBBC has served as a bridge in the healthy development of UK-China economic and trade relations and the growth of British companies in China, providing JLR and other British companies with more comprehensive local market opportunities. CBBC also promotes in-depth exchange between the UK and China in business, trade, and culture. In recent years, we’ve used our brand DNA and British charm to contribute to Sino-British cultural exchanges while practising our corporate social responsibility through cultural and sports programmes.

What are your ambitions and plans for the future in China?

The Chinese market is a critical driver of global economic growth, offering tremendous development opportunities for British companies. Over the past few years, JLR’s global board has expressed interest in visiting China and experiencing the vitality of the world’s most dynamic market.

In JLR’s global business layout, the Chinese market aims to be at the forefront of the world and times, focusing on industry trends and local consumer demand, and leveraging its local innovation advantages in R&D, procurement, manufacturing, and more. The aim is to consistently deliver a full-chain modern luxury journey for domestic consumers and contribute to global strategic development goals.

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

For the past 50 years, ambassador-level diplomatic relations have forged ties that endure over time, building a “community of common destiny” and a foundation for JLR and other British companies to further develop in China. As a participant and beneficiary of UK-China economic and trade cooperation, we’ve witnessed China’s continued openness and resilience. The Chinese market is an important core of JLR’s global growth.

In the future, we will continue enhancing our competitiveness and attractiveness in China and achieve higher-quality corporate development while growing with the local market. The next 50 years will ring in a brand new chapter.

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 Jaguar Land Rover appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Among all the new non-fiction, history and business books, it’s easy to forget that contemporary fiction can provide a window into a country, its consumers and its culture. It’s fair to say the last few years have been a slightly fallow period for new Chinese fiction in translation, but 2022 has seen a bumper crop, and 2023 looks like it might be just as fecund. So here’s a roundup of what you might consider reading over the holidays and what lessons you might take from each.

Forget the social stereotypes: Dinner for Six (Lu Min, trans: Nicky Harman & Helen Wang) 

“Fluid families” are a thing in China too. In Dinner for Six, two single parents and their four children get together for dinner in a grim industrial town. Su Qin is a successful accountant who’s trying to reconcile getting together with Ding Bogang, a laid-off factory worker. Her studious daughter looks like she might be starting a relationship with Ding’s son, while her other is in search of the “perfect” family unit, and Ding Bogang’s daughter is desperate to get pregnant. Not your stereotypical Chinese family by any means, and reflecting the growing diversity of family forms in contemporary China.

Seeking the natural and the organic: Barefoot Doctor (Can Xue, trans: Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping)

A fond portrait of a group of healers and herbalists in Yun Village, where people “don’t count the passing years”. Mrs Yi seeks natural remedies and inspires a younger generation keen to find traditional healing methods. The young group have abandonment issues, struggle with love affairs and relationships and seek success in non-traditional occupations. There’s a bit of magic realism too. China has long tried to balance development, growth and modernity on the one hand with the traditional, organic and natural on the other – not always with much success. Barefoot Doctor grapples with this balance in today’s rural China.

Generational conflict and dysfunctional families: Cocoon (Zhang Yueran, trans: Jeremy Tiang) 

Zhang is one of China’s most celebrated young female authors right now and here she continues to deal with the central issues of contemporary urban China. In this case, two young people from dysfunctional families, Cheng Gong and Li Jiaqi. Both have developed stronger relationships with their grandparents and so hark back to their youth in the Cultural Revolution and the still hidden, never talked about, mysteries of that chaotic time. Cocoon is about pure friendship for the sake of it, the new forms hope and fulfilment can take in China (beyond money, career success and luxury), and how a new generation comes to terms with its family’s and country’s past.

Remembering those that are left behind: Rouge Street (Shuang Xuetao, trans: Jeremy Tiang) 

Three great novellas mixing realism, mysticism and noir in one volume, all set in the cold of northeast China around Shenyang, and by one of China’s most innovative writers at the moment. The stories are about tough neighbourhoods facing tough times where the “market economy” is little more than a harbinger of things going from bad to worse. Once the praised industrial hub of Maoism, Shuang Xuetao portrays a city blighted by unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorce and suicide. But there are signs of hope – in the human spirit if not in the economic machine. An inventor dreams of escaping his drab surroundings in a flying machine. A criminal, trapped beneath a frozen lake, fights a giant fish. A strange girl pledges to ignite a field of sorghum stalks.

Balancing the old and the new: Graft (Li Peifu, trans: James Trapp)

The reform era of the 1980s is the subject of any number of new non-fiction historical studies at the moment. But what were the 1980s like at ground level, as experienced by ordinary people? When it comes to this period, perhaps fiction is a better window that non-fiction. In central China, as reform becomes the mantra, Li Delin, a scientist of humble background, and his fellow villager, a flower seller called Liu Jinding, share an ambition to rise from their unassuming rural origins. They gain political and economic power but are unprepared for how the times and their new positions will corrupt their friends and families. Li sinks into corruption and despondency and is faced with a moral fight to recover his old self.

A window into Xinjiang: The Backstreets (Perhat Tursun, trans: Darren Byler) 

A rare translation from the preeminent contemporary Uyghur author Perhat Turson that displays influences from Chinese authors such as Mo Yan and western authors from Kafka to Dostoyevsky while intertwining elements from Uyghur literary traditions and Sufi poetics. A Uyghur man arrives in Urumqi after finding a temporary job in a government office. Seeking to escape the pain and poverty of the countryside, he finds the big city cold and unfriendly. He wanders the streets, accompanied by the bitter fog of winter pollution, reciting a monologue of numbers and odours, lust and loathing, memories, and madness.

A little hutong nostalgia: The Wedding Party (Wu Linxu, trans: Jeremy Tiang) 

Perhaps the lockdowns and restrictions of Zero Covid in China were a time for reflection and nostalgia. Not least most recently a general nostalgia felt by many (even those too young to really remember) for the Jiang Zemin era. Wu Linxu’s The Wedding Party has waited a while to be translated – it was first published in 1984 and a winner of the prestigious Mao Dun literary prize. You embark on the 400 pages of The Wedding Party much like you arrive at a celebration of extended family, friends and neighbours – with hope, joy and good humour. It’s a celebration of raucous families, aspirational young Beijingers in the 1980s, migrant workers, new business entrepreneurs and a still vibrant and extensive community of hutong dwellers in central Beijing. Much of it would change – the hutongs disappear, families broken up and living in far away high-rises, the city rebuilt, the simple pleasures of a colour wedding photo and a hired Hongqi sedan for the day now seen as fond nostalgia. A great Christmas read – like a glorious almost contemporary Dickens for the holidays.

And coming up in 2023 …

A new addition to the Chinese sci-fi canon: Hospital (Han Song, trans: Michael Berry) 

This book tells the tale of a man with a mysterious illness and his journey through a dystopian Ballardian (well, JG Ballard did come from Shanghai!) hospital system. Sound familiar? When Yang Wei travels to C City for work, he expects nothing more than a standard business trip. A break from his day-to-day routine, a good salary, a nice hotel. But a complimentary bottle of mineral water from the hotel minibar results in sudden and debilitating stomach pain, followed by unconsciousness. When he wakes three days later, things don’t improve; they get worse. With no explanation, the hotel forcibly sends him to a hospital for examination. There, he receives no diagnosis, no discharge date … just a diligent guide to the labyrinthine medical system he’s now circulating through. Armed with nothing but his own confusion, Yang Wei travels deeper into the inner workings of the hospital and the secrets it’s hiding from the patients. As he seeks escape and answers, one man’s illness takes him on a quest through a corrupt system and his own troubled mind.

A twisted tale of the one-child policy and bureaucracy: Cherries on a Pomegranate Tree (Li Er, trans: Dave Haysom)

Kong Fanhua is the only female village chief in Xiushui County and her day-to-day tasks range from the mundane to the near-impossible: tracking down a runaway who left her twins behind, keeping rumours of a vengeful ghost at bay while trying to convince some rich American to invest in the local paper plant. And now a mother has run away after becoming illegally pregnant. Kong’s problems just keep mounting – nobody’s planting the crops, the local male cadres are somewhere south of hopeless, the government’s investigating her county’s birth quotas and she’s up for re-election. And on top of it all, her husband has developed a fascination with camels. Bizarre, surreal, funny and poignant on the slew of ever-changing demands made on local officials in backwater China.

Finally – a novel by a former foreign resident of Beijing that captures the zeitgeist: The Soul of Beijing (Tom Pellman)

An ambitious, kaleidoscopic, 500-page epic of near contemporary Beijing by former city resident, American author Tom Pellman. The book features young entrepreneurs, corrupt bureaucrats and disaffected expats, with some ripped-from-the-headlines plot lines. New Year fireworks illuminate the Beijing night, but all 20-year-old Panzi can think about is the mysterious former classmate who has just burst back into his life. Impulsive, spontaneous, and full of compassion, Xiao Song is like no one he has ever known – the first person who has made Panzi feel whole since his father’s suicide. Across town and a thousand social strata away, the son of Beijing’s vice mayor and his gilded friends tear through the night in a cherry-red Ferrari, swerving off the road and into Xiao Song’s life. Panzi rushes to the scene just as a barely conscious Xiao Song is whisked away and evidence of the crash scrubbed from existence. The Soul of Beijing is zeitgeisty, edgy and sprawling, and captures Beijing pre-Covid better than any other novel by a foreign author in recent years.

The post The best China fiction novels of 2022 appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Tracing back the origins, exploits and stories of the British Chinese community, who can trace their heritage to regions across East and Southeast Asia, ‘Chinese and British’ draws on the national significance of what it means to be Chinese and British. In addition, it celebrates the lasting impact of Chinese people on the UK, from wartime service and contributions to popular cuisine to achievements in art, literature, sport, music, fashion and film.

The exhibition presents personal artefacts from Chinese British communities alongside books, manuscripts, and maps from the British Library’s collection. One of the highlights of the exhibition is a map from 1880 of Chinese communities around the docks of the East End of London. As Britain traded heavily with the Chinese in the 17th century, increasing numbers of Chinese people and sailors settled around the docks at Limehouse and set up businesses in the area.

The exhibition also showcases Chinese efforts in WWI and WWII. In WWI, Chinese Labour Corps helped to build the trenches in northern France, and in WWII, many were deployed as seamen and often worked on ships as caterers. The exhibition highlights these efforts through trench art and personal memoirs. Importantly, the British Library also explores the forced repatriation of Chinese sailors, many of whom were unexpectedly deported after WWII. This was largely unknown until revealed in 2022 in a British Home Office internal investigation report on the incident, which acknowledged the degree of coercion and racial factors behind the repatriation operation.

Another focal point of the exhibit is the challenges Chinese immigrants faced finding jobs in the early 20th century. Many new arrivals found work in industries such as merchant shipping and laundries, then later in catering, restaurants and takeaway shops. Since then, many British Chinese people have excelled in careers such as science, medicine, law and politics, and have significantly contributed to arts and culture in the UK. Through writing, fashion, music and film, people of Chinese descent in the UK are continuing to explore the intersection between their different cultures – often developing a unique perspective that incorporates both Chinese and British identities.

The Chinese and British exhibit is a must for anyone interested in bridging the cultural gap between the East and West. For example, for UK consumer brands, or for any company considering selling to Chinese clients, it offers valuable and important insights into how to better connect with the global Chinese diaspora.

“Chinese diaspora in the UK has always been an important target for UK consumer brands in their China marketing campaigns, but this is even more vital now that Chinese tourists are not able to travel abroad at the levels they used to before the pandemic,” Antoaneta Becker, Director of Consumer Economy at the CBBC, points out. “The UK Chinese community is both a key consumer audience as well as an ambassador for Brand Britain. Understanding its history, origins and target groups is a key part of any China cultural literacy brands should own.”

Currently, there are over 400,000 Chinese residents in the UK, which makes it even more important to engage with this dynamic community. The exhibition, which is presented in both English and Chinese, runs until April 2023, and entrance is free.

The post Is the British Library’s ‘Chinese and British’ exhibition worth seeing? appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

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.

The post How China saved the treasures of the Forbidden City during WW2 appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

When I speak to Mark Kitto from his North Norfolk home, he is sporting a neat handlebar moustache. Accompanied by ever-so-slightly greying hair, a strong jawline and a booming voice, Kitto looks every bit an early 20th-century military general.

The moustache, he explains, is a necessity for the latest chapter in his ever-evolving career. All three of the characters in his solo theatre show Chinese Boxing – a play about the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 that he has written, directed and is starring in – sports a form of moustache.

Kitto, the former metals trader, well-known publisher and hotelier, has managed to fit more careers into his five decades than most people could in a lifetime. But his latest – and arguably most rewarding – career shift is treading the boards up and down the country in his one-man show.

The former Welsh Guards Captain has achieved success in a number of different industries but is best known for his time as one of the early foreign publishers in China as the founder of the That’s Magazines series. The English language publications were an essential guide for expats to navigate Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, informing them of the best places to eat, drink, and shop, as well as how to enjoy some of the country’s burgeoning cultural scenes. But when the business started to become financially successful, local government rivals decided to take his licences and effectively evict him from his own business.

In 2009, Kitto published a book documenting the travails of setting up businesses in China. That’s China was an entertaining and often eye-opening account of the risks of doing business in China during China’s period of rapid growth and desire for earning a quick buck – at any cost.

Kitto outside his hideaway in Moganshan (Photo: Shiho Fukada)

After he was removed from his own publishing business, he moved to the mountain retreat of Moganshan, two hours west of Shanghai, which was the summer destination of wealthy British expats and Chinese triads alike a century before. Most of the stunning villas that were built in the early 20th century had fallen into ruin so Kitto and his wife set up a cafe and guesthouse to appeal to 21st-century expats looking to escape the hustle and bustle of modern-day Shanghai. Kitto wrote a second book, China Cuckoo, about his eight years in the cool bamboo forests.

“Of all the places in China, [Moganshan] is the one where I most felt part of the community for the very simple reason that the locals, the older guys, had all grown up surrounded by foreigners,” Kitto explains. “Their parents worked for foreigners, and when I appeared in the village, it was a simple case of, ‘Oh yeah, they’re back.’ So what they did was treat me like, ‘Where have you been all this time,’ which was really, really nice for China.”

But in 2012, after nearly two decades in China, he decided to return to the UK, penning a much-imitated departure letter to China that was published in Prospect Magazine, where he wrote a regular column.

Kitto’s return to the UK saw him launch a local listings newspaper covering North Norfolk. Kitto talks about missing the size and speed of China but also how business in China is done in a more gentle manner. “When you know the rules of the game and you know what’s going on, I find it a more pleasant way of business or social interaction,” he says. “The problem with many in the UK is that they’re sort of quite aggressively defensive. They’re not open to new ideas.”

The nice thing about Britain is that the government supports you. It doesn’t kick your door down and fine you because one of their mates has called them up

His return to the UK also saw him return to one of his first loves – acting. “I’ve always been interested in it. I did some at uni in Beijing in the 80s and I did a bit of stuff in Beijing in the mid-90s when I got back there.” He performed in the musical Cabaret in Beijing in 1996 and acted for the Shanghai People’s Arts and had a great experience. “Right from the get-go people were saying: ‘Oh, you’re quite good at this. Have you ever thought of doing it seriously?’ And I said, ‘Well, kind of. But never seriously, seriously.’” After taking a few courses and a few more parts in student films he started to get more offers and since 2018, it has really taken off.

But today, he is talking about his one-man show Chinese Boxing. The idea came about after Kitto was reading a report about China’s mass-mobilised citizen-led online army and it gave him a thought: “We’ve got the Chinese government using Chinese people citizens as their tool – as a little sort of secret weapon against people and especially against foreigners. It just made me think of the Boxer Rebellion,” he says.

Poster for Mark Kitto’s one-man show, Chinese Boxing

After plenty of reading and research, Kitto said the main three characters just simply walked in the door. The first is the frightfully proper Sir Claude MacDonald, who was the minister plenipotentiary – ambassador to Peking – in 1900 and commanded the defence of the Legations when they were besieged by the Boxers. The second character is Rong Lu. He was actually military imperial commissioner in charge of military training and commander of the Beijing garrison. 

“He was basically the top military dog in the Qing Dynasty in Beijing, and he was ordered by the Empress Dowager Cixi to help the Boxers kill all the foreigners. Of course, the big twist of the play is that he actually helped the foreigners survive.” This rumoured former lover of Cixi did in fact reach out to the foreign relief force when they arrived outside Beijing but was ignored by the foreign generals and he faded into obscurity.

“And then there is Sergeant Frank Richards, who is a real person who was in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He served in the First World War and wrote the best first-hand account of the First World War by a junior soldier,” says Kitto. “Richards is down and dirty and quite cheeky, and just gives the real, earthy accounts of the relief force. And having been in the Welsh Guards myself, having a Welsh character in Welsh is about the only accent I can get away with.”

Because these are first-hand accounts, Kitto wanted to ensure his research was accurate. He revisited Peter Fleming’s The Siege at Peking and read McDonald’s Diaries, as well as History in Three Keys by Paul Cohen, and the enjoyable Indiscreet Letters from Peking by Bertram Lennox Simpson – also known as Putnam Weale – who was eventually murdered during the warlord era.

Playing a Chinese character hasn’t been without its challenges, says Kitto. He was cancelled by one small Norfolk theatre that argued playing a Chinese character could be perceived as racist. Although Kitto turned up with a book of references and reviews, their ambitions to win an anti-racism award would be put in jeopardy if they let him play it. Kitto explained that the play is about cross-cultural understanding. The theatre made an apology but it was not to be at that particular theatre.

The show is a warning for Western audiences, he says. “It shows what the Western world did to China and should help explain why China feels the way it does about us,” he argues. Chinese audiences love it, he says, because it puts through a viewpoint others hear less regularly.

The post-show Q&A he says can also be very entertaining and lively as debates ensue and questions allow Kitto to share more of his career and personal stories of China.

The show will be at the Playground Theatre 9-12 March 2022, and Head Gate Theatre, Colchester on 15 March 2022  

The theatre offers a special ticket deal of ‘10 for £10’. Mark’s books are both now available in audiobook form.

The post Why you should see ex-China businessman Mark Kitto’s one man play appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

The books in the “Shortest Histories” series are not actually that short – 250 pages or so – but it’s still a massive challenge to fit everything from China’s Warring States period to Xi Jinping into that tight space. Even more challenging when you’re trying to explain an awful lot of history, dynasties and rulers while also balancing ideas about China’s inherent contradictions, new assertiveness and ongoing challenges. Still more of a gigantic task if you’re also explaining Chinese creativity over the centuries, the country’s ethnic and linguistic diversity, as well as putting women back at the heart of China’s story.

As we all get back to work, travelling and being busy again, perhaps ‘The Shortest History of China’ is just what we need to better understand the country we’re doing business with. As Jaivin, a noted Australia-based scholar, translator and writer on a myriad of China-related issues, argues in her opening gambit – “China contains a multitude. Its unruly complexity is part of its grandeur.” 

What’s the idea behind the concept of the “shortest history” of China?

Chinese history is long, life is short. Many people today understand that they need to know a lot more than they do about China, but don’t have the time or patience for long, academic histories. Ever since studying Chinese history at university, many years ago now, it’s been my dream to write a popular history of China, one that gives a sense of the great sweep of its history, demonstrates the importance of culture to China’s sense of itself as a nation, introduces more of the great women than usually make it into the shorter histories, and illuminates the ancient philosophies and preoccupations that continue to inform contemporary politics.

There are fantastic books on China that focus on one or another period of its history, or influential figures, or specific aspects of history. But to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, you need an overview. On the one hand, I wanted to offer enough general information that a reader could see how one era flows – or crashes – into the next, and on the other to provide enough vivid detail so that the people and events that shaped this history come alive.

Historical spectres of corruption and disunity continue to worry the People’s Republic today, there’s nothing new under the sun – so are we simply doomed to repeat history?

To avoid being doomed to repeat history, you need to study history. There are many lessons that history is happy to teach us if we are willing to learn. Dynasties fell to rebellions that broke out because corruption both squeezed and neglected the common people. So the leaders of new ruling houses were typically very aware of the lessons of corruption and tried to guard against it. Their successors, however, often forgot these lessons. 

At the same time, President Xi is waging a fierce campaign against history itself or, specifically, “historical nihilism”. Historical nihilism involves telling Chinese history differently from the way the Communist Party wants it told. The approved version of history, however, omits or underplays the party’s own errors and other inconvenient truths. But you can’t just pick and choose the lessons you want to learn from history and ignore the rest, or you won’t learn from history at all.

For the fairly knowledgeable, as many business people trading with and in China are, what do you think we mostly get wrong in our general understanding of Chinese history?

Anyone who has spent time in China would have been told that China has 5,000 years of history. Yet historical records date back only (“only!”) 3,500 years to the first written records (“oracle bone script”). The thing is, 5,000 years takes us back to the time of the semi-mythical Fiery and Yellow Emperors, Yan Di and Huang Di, whom the majority of Han Chinese have long considered to be their ancestors. The Fiery and Yellow Emperors are now spoken of as the ancestors of all Chinese. It’s a subtle point, but an illuminating one, and it goes to show that it always pays to ask questions about what you assume – or are asked to assume – about Chinese history.

A second, related point is that from ancient times, the writing of history in China has always served a didactic, moral purpose. Most of us probably are not as alert to that purpose as we could be.   

Britain has been trading with China since the 1770s. What does history tell us about the obsession with the China trade that still exists in the UK?

On one level, it tells us that the UK has always desired Chinese products (originally tea, spices and porcelain, today electronic equipment, machinery, furniture, toys, and textiles) more than China has desired ones from the UK.

On another, it tells us that this trade carries with it moral hazards, albeit ones that have drastically changed over time. In the 19^th century, Great Britain fought two wars of aggression – the Opium Wars – against the Qing (the ruling dynasty) to reverse the trade imbalance. It insisted, against official objection, on selling opium, a harmful and addictive drug, into China, and then demanded a number of other concessions from the court through a series of “unequal treaties” that are central to the narrative of the “century of humiliation” at the centre of Chinese “patriotic education” today. The current obsession with China trade involves different kinds of moral hazards, such as the tricky politics around Huawei. So history tells us that the China trade has always forced British business to weigh up values versus profit in its dealings.

If you could pick one point in China’s history and say to CBBC members, “this you really need to think about and understand”, what would it be?

Take the rhetoric of the Communist Party of China seriously. That doesn’t mean you should believe everything its leaders and media mouthpieces say. But you need to know that when someone like Xi Jinping talks about “historical nihilism,” and official media repeat and amplify the message, it’s probably something you should be curious about. If you dig a little deeper, one of the things you discover about “historical nihilism” – seemingly such a strange or minor thing for China’s leadership to focus on – is that Xi believes that “historical nihilism” was a factor in the Soviet Union’s collapse: once they lost control of the official narrative, they could no longer control the people or summon their faith.

Another example is the new buzzword of “common prosperity”, which aims to address gross inequalities of wealth. It’s uncertain how this will affect foreign business and trade except that all parts of the Chinese economy will almost definitely come under greater scrutiny, direction, and control by the party. It’s worth keeping an eye on what Xi and other leaders are saying about it.

The post How understanding Chinese history can help your business in China appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.