Peter Wilson

China and the US

I'm going to Washington and New York next week. The Sino-American relationship has been described by strategists on both sides as the most important bilateral relationship in the world. I want to understand it better from the US side. Now is a good time to go.

Posted at 08:08 27 February 2009 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[4]

Happy New Year

Posted at 06:06 30 January 2009 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[3]

Talking in Chinese

Some great articles about the Foreign Secretary's conversation with young Chinese editors at the end of last month have been posted on the Communist Youth League website.  For those of you who read Chinese, I thought you might like to check them out, at   http://www.chinaumu.org/node/node_6134.htm  . 
 
I am really happy, because yesterday my blog in Chinese and English went live on Sohu's website.  Sohu saw the Chinese version of this blog on the Embassy website, at www.ukinchina.fco.gov.uk , (there is lots of good stuff on this site) and wanted to carry it on the Sohu platform.  The sohu address is www.vipwilson.blog.sohu.com .  Thank you for the really kind comments so far, especially to Sha Sha and Daduhongshi - the first two to comment, and to get a seat on the sofa....
 
But I have got to be honest with you.  I do speak Chinese, and really enjoy speaking it, but I still make lots of mistakes (I will not tell you about the most embarrassing ones - Chinese has a lot of homophones, and getting tones wrong can get you into trouble).  I do read Chinese, but I am slow - as my teacher will tell you.  The Foreign Office trained me, for two years, in the mid 1990's - half in London, half in Beijing. 
 
It is true that learning Chinese very well is hard.  But sometimes I think that non-Chinese get frightened by the idea, and so don't start learning Chinese at all.  I know lots of people, including my wife Monica, who speak well and simply without any formal training.  I know a few people who are fluent speakers having never sat in a classroom, but spent a lot of time here.  And I have one friend who taught himself to speak and write, and enjoyed it so much that he now translates legal texts.  It is a highly specialised and technical field, and he is very good at it. 
 
Chinese is a fun language.  But learning it is really important, too  - not just to get business done, but to better understand other views, and ways of thinking.  We are lucky in the Foreign Office - we have a good programme, which trains new language students (not just in Chinese, but Japanese, Arabic, Russian and other languages) every year.  In the Embassy, our Ambassador, our Deputy Head of Mission, and quite a lot of the British staff speak Chinese.  More importantly, most of us are Chinese!  For a hard language like Chinese, Foreign Office students are given a lot of time - enough to get quite good.  The new generation - who just graduated from Peking University last week - are a lot better than I was.  Standards are higher now, and teaching here in China is much better (it is hard to do this effectively for people from such different linguistic traditions, but a lot of research has now been done on this).  And maybe they are just cleverer.  We are also recruiting people now who already have Mandarin, tho' like everyone else they must compete in an open competition. 
 
There are more and more people learning Chinese in the UK now.  Quite a few primary schools in the UK are now teaching Chinese.  British students in China now number thousands (not hundreds, as was the case when I was a student here over a decade ago).  Not a match for the estimated 200 million people who are learning English in China today.  But the comparison is not a direct one - British people don't have a monopoly on the English language, any more than the US, India or Singapore does.  The first non-Chinese leader to speak fluent Chinese is Australia's Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (I have seen him on Chinese TV - he sounded very impressive to me).   In 20 or 30 years' time, there may be more.

Posted at 00:51 17 November 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[3]

Death penalty in China

I went to a seminar on the death penalty this morning, that senior Chinese judges and lawyers have organised with the Great Britain China Centre and international experts, and which we and the European Commission are co-sponsoring. Because of the EU's opposition to the death penalty, the Commission and Member States support activity like this in those countries where the death penalty is still used. In practice that number, thankfully, is getting smaller all the time - though China is not alone, and this of course is a legitimate, serious global debate.

The debate inside China on the death penalty is a reasonably open one. But it is hard to get a handle on, because the figures for executions are not public. Estimates for the overall figure vary, but there is a general consensus that the number of executions in China has at least halved since the 1990s. Important reforms were introduced at the beginning of 2007, that the Supreme People's Court must review each sentence when lower courts seek to have it immediately applied. (Some death sentences are suspended for two years: in practice if the prisoner behaves well, my understanding is that these cases are usually commuted to life.) The result has been that an estimated 15% of cases have gone back to the High Courts. Courts are also more likely to think twice before passing a death sentence, now that they are automatically referred to the Supreme People's Court.

Several senior Chinese experts reiterated the publicly stated long term aim to abolish the death penalty. One talked about China's signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): China would need to seriously restrict the application of the death penalty, and ideally consider abolition, in order to ratify the Convention, which, having signed, it clearly wanted to do. As part of the long term project of which this seminar was a part, research has been done into public opinion on the death penalty in China. Although 60% say they are in favour, a large number don't know what they think, and when asked about applying this penalty in particular cases, about 80% oppose it, except in cases of murder. The list of cases to which the death penalty still technically applies in China is a long one, although the scope is narrowing.

There are strong practical reasons for opposing the death penalty. In most cases, the real deterrent for a crime is the likelihood of getting caught more than the severity of the punishment. When the death penalty is applied, subsequent discovery of the wrongful conviction is irreversible. And it is hard to use the ultimate penalty as a deterrent when it is not clear to how many individuals it has actually been applied.

Our disagreement on this subject is not just with China - it is, very publicly, with some other countries too. These days, experts can meet, and talk about what all do agree is a common aim - abolition. The seminar continues today.

Posted at 13:22 31 October 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[3]

Going on TV tomorrow

Going on TV tomorrow.  Luckily I now have a suit.

Someone kindly asked me to do an interview on Chinese television's English language channel tomorrow (Friday), about China's soft power, to be broadcast on National Day here, which is October 1.  I was very happy to be asked.  Luckily my better suit has just come back.  Until late this afternoon it was with a senior colleague from London, who had come for some important talks and didn't have a one, but was, fortunately, the same size as me!     

I would really welcome thoughts - about the impact and impression China, and this year, has made on you, whether you are inside or outside China, and wherever you come from. 

I will see comments before the show gets recorded at 3pm Beijing time on Friday (that's 8am UK time).  I know this is a long shot, but it would be great to have some imput from the blog

Posted at 13:56 25 September 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[2]

China and the internet

The statistics are pretty amazing.  China has passed the US this year with the most "netizens" on earth - over 220 million, and increasing by more than 4 million a month.  Chinese users spend an average of 16 hours a week on line.  And 50% of them are under 24 - more than seven years younger than the average internet user in the US.  Users seem to have different interests, too - the most popular service is online music, used by 86%.  Search is only the fifth most popular.  Online gaming comes ahead of e-mail.  Commerce is a more popular search than sex or celebrity, which leads elsewhere.   There are 44 million bloggers.

The internet is censored here.  Undesirable foreign websites are blocked, although the BBC English language service was unblocked earlier this year (its Chinese language site is still only accessible outside China).  Blogs are regularly policed, and closed.  Earlier this year, a new Government regulation required all websites carrying video content to be state owned or controlled - but this was watered down to allow some existing sites to continue.   Internet users do get round blocks by using proxy websites - and as soon as they close down, others open.  The proliferation of blogs has also meant that it is impossible to keep an eye on everything all of the time - some campaigns have taken off before being closed down, and have sometimes led to a response, rather than just a clampdown.  The Government itself finds the internet a useful tool to guage public opinion, in a system where its more formal expression is not encouraged.  And it is also useful in pursuing Government objectives of holding officials to account, and exposing corruption. 

It was nice that the first comment on my blog was Chinese.  It appeared on my screen, from Tian, as two squares, because my machine needs me to turn on a separate programme to read Chinese characters.  I turned on Chinese Star, not sure what I would find.   It resolved the squares - into a colon and a bracket.   A smile.  Thank you!  You've encouraged me to keep going!

Posted at 09:45 17 July 2008 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[2]