The Role and Functions of the British Embassy in Beijing Panel 2 – The rise of China as an economic superpower and its implications 7 June 2012, 15.30-17.00 India Office Council Chamber, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Chair: Dr Judith Rowbotham: Nottingham Trent University Witnesses: Sir William Ehrman, KCMG: Ambassador, 2006-10 Sir Christopher Hum, KCMG: Ambassador, 2002-05 David Coates: Political Counsellor, 1989-1992 Nigel Cox: Minister, 2000-02 Other participants: Niki Alsford: Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies Dr Antony Best: London School of Economics Tim Dowse: FCO Dr Michael F. Hopkins: University of Liverpool Lord Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC: Beijing, 1954-56 Dr Richard Smith: FCO Historians Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, KT, GCMG, PhD, FRSE: former Governor of Hong Kong, 1987-92
DR JUDITH ROWBOTHAM (Chair): I hope you are all suitably refreshed with tea and cake. I would like to welcome you back to the second panel this afternoon—looking at the rise of China as an economic superpower and its implications. I remind you that this is not under Chatham House rules; you are on the record when and if you speak. Equally, I remind you that before anything is published you will be sent a copy of the transcript, so that you can check it for accuracy and—okay—for libel. Please also make sure, members of the audience, that when you speak, if you are invited so to do, you identify yourselves. Unlike our previous distinguished chair, Lord Wilson, I do not know you by sight. My qualification, apart from being a historian who has chaired such witness seminars before, is a childhood as an RAF brat in Singapore and Hong Kong in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so while I have a very clear interest in this, I do not have the expertise of Lord Wilson. Please remember to identify yourselves when you speak. I would like to invite the panel to talk very briefly, first, about themselves and their time at the Embassy in Beijing—I, too, grew up calling it Peking, and we have Pekingese at home. May I invite, first, David Coates to describe briefly his period and also his expectations when he went there?
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