Safe hands for a delicate relationship
Opinion polls tell us that almost half of the British public would like the Crown to skip a generation and pass straight to the Duke of Cambridge. In China this week, it felt as though it already had.
With the Queen no longer travelling to far-flung lands and the Prince of Wales in effect banned from Beijing because of his friendship with the Dalai Lama, Prince William truly came of age as a statesman.
The UK’s long-term relationship with what will surely be the most powerful country on Earth is crucial, and it might be the Duke of Cambridge, not his father, who will be regarded as the face of Britain here in years to come.
It was Prince William’s face that dominated the front pages of newspapers in China and adorned billboards, alongside the wildly popular David Beckham, during a four-day visit that he used to campaign for an end to the ivory trade.
More than just offering an insight into the long-term relationship with China, the Duke’s historic visit – the first by a senior member of the Royal family since 1986 – may also have given us a glimpse of what the reign of King Charles III might look like.
Charles has always been politically engaged, but perhaps in the future he can depend on the services of his son to smooth the way when it comes to countries or causes with which he has not enjoyed the best of relations.
At the top of that list is China, which the Prince of Wales has not visited since he described its leaders as “appalling old waxworks” during the Hong Kong handover ceremony in 1997.
He has made concerted efforts to repair the damage since then; he set up the Prince of Wales’s China Foundation, but has never been able to see its work for himself because of his highprofile stance on Tibet.
For the time being at least, he will be relying on hearing from his son about the restoration of traditional courtyard houses, or hutongs, including one in the Shija area of Beijing visited by William on Monday.
The Duke of Cambridge is not the deep thinker that his father is – it is hard to imagine Prince Charles talking to President Xi Jinping about football, as William did – but that is also his great strength. He is a safe pair of hands, a man who can be trusted to meet emperors, kings and presidents without causing offence or making a gaffe (unlike Prince Philip or his uncle Andrew); this makes him the perfect instrument of the Foreign Office.
Kerry Brown, a former British diplomat in Beijing and now the director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said it was a “big deal” for Xi to meet the Duke, because “Xi is more important than William – he is the leader of the world’s second-biggest economy”.
Indeed, the Chinese media had been told that the Duke would more likely be meeting the deputy premier, Yang Jiechi, China’s equivalent of Nick Clegg, in keeping with his status as second in line to the throne, only for the Chinese government to make an unexpected late change by lining up not only President Xi but also the deputy president, Li Yuanchao.
Bear in mind that as recently as 2013, the state-run Global Times newspaper summed up the UK as an “old European country apt for travel and study”, then contrast that with this week’s headlines: the China News Service said the visit would propel Chinese-UK relations into a “golden age”, while the Qianjiang Evening News described the Duke of Cambridge as “the prince we have watched growing up” – a Chinese expression describing someone to whom you are close.
Mr Brown said: “The Chinese do now understand the soft power of meeting a member of the Royal family. Xi is going to the UK later this year and this is a good way of setting up the mood music for that.
“Geopolitically, China is in the business of making friends because its rate of growth is slowing down so it needs more benign relations. Its relationship with Britain has had a tough time because of David Cameron meeting the Dalai Lama a couple of years ago, and this is China’s way of rewarding Britain for playing the game since then.”
Trade between China and Britain is worth £50billion every year, and the Foreign Office is ploughing money into promoting UK products in the People’s Republic, so it will have welcomed the state-run China Daily’s description of the Duke’s meeting as “obvious progress in a relationship that has been strained by issues including the Tibet autonomous region”, adding that “past frictions were set aside”.
This makes it all the more unfortunate that words like “embarrassment” have been used in some quarters to describe the end of the Duke’s tour.
In visiting a wildlife sanctuary in Yunnan province on Wednesday, he walked into a trap set by reporters waiting to ambush him about the issue of elephants made to perform for tourists by the Chinese less than a mile away.
William was frustrated that his message about the illegal wildlife trade – for him, the mostanticipated moment in his tour of the Far East – was largely lost amid the hoopla about performing elephants in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve.
The murderous look he gave to a Sky TV reporter who asked him about the issue said it all: while he was trying to campaign for conservation, the media he so distrusts were setting him up for a fall.
The right thing might have been to tackle the question head-on by explaining that only by seeing all aspects of China’s treatment of elephants can he hope to understand the culture and make a difference. However, sadly, while William is a better communicator when he speaks off the cuff about his passions than he is when making speeches, royal engagements are governed by such rigid protocol and stage management that spontaneity is virtually non-existent.
Not that the Royal Household is the worst offender by any means. The Duke will have learnt from his visit just how rigidly the Chinese and Japanese stick to protocol and orders, sometimes with comical results.
His visit to Fukushima prefecture with Japan’s premier, Shinzo Abe, was beyond parody as the two men went to an outdoor playground to prove to the world that the area was safe for children to play in despite the 2011 nuclear disaster 30 miles away.
With just minutes to go before the two men arrived, the playground looked less like an advert for healthy outdoor play than a scene from a postapocalyptic disaster movie because of a complete absence of children. Royal Household staff spoke to Abe’s nervous-looking flunkies and were aghast to be told that only three children would be allowed into the playground, to bounce to order on a trampoline in front of the watching VIP guests.
Despite frantic protests from the British delegation, it seemed that nothing could be done; in Japan, underlings are terrified of showing initiative, and it was only at the very last minute that the suggestion reached someone senior enough to authorise a dozen or so extra children to be allowed in as background scenery.
Japan and China’s differing cultures make them two of the most difficult countries in which to do business or diplomacy (particularly with the added element of China’s human rights record). “These are the first steps on a very long road in terms of his relationship with these two countries,” said a source close to the Duke. “Issues like conservation have a long trajectory and you have to keep working at it. It doesn’t just change overnight.”
The tale of Mao Tse Tung’s response to a question about the impact of the French Revolution in 1789 – “It’s too early to tell” – might be apocryphal, but it illustrates the fact that Chinese politicians take a long view.
The Duke’s visit may not have changed the world, but first impressions count, and despite the criticism back home, he did not put a foot wrong as far as the Chinese are concerned. In laying such solid foundations, he may have begun an entente that will last the rest of his life, and with China’s influence growing by the day, we can all be thankful for that.