GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
11 JULY 2026. CHINA POST #629
CHINA AND THE FOREIGN MEDIA
“BUT WHAT HAS LITHUANIA GOT TO DO WITH CHINA?”
RECALL THE CONTEXT
Its 1971 and President Nixon has taken the world by storm by announcing that he will make a visit to China in 1972. This is an epoch-making moment. Since 1949 the U.S. has ignored the new People’s Republic of China of 600 million people. It does not exist. There is no such place. There is a place called the Republic of China of questionable legitimacy located in Formosa and ruled by Chang Kaishek, the defeated leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. A Civil War that was won by the Communists and lost by the KMT. The Communists rule in Bejing. The KMT sits on the margins in Taiwan.
Nixon has been compelled to recognise the logic of history. China is Beijing not Taiwan. Mao is the Future. Chang is the Past.
Ever since 1949, the U.S. has ignored China and pretended it did not exist. The U.S. banned any U.S. politician, academic, businessman or woman, entertainer, student – any U.S. national at all from visiting China. The result? – there is a dearth of knowledge in the U.S. about China. It is all second-hand. The U.S. has no first-hand face-to-face knowledge of China.
Jack Perry is a victim of the U.S’s policy. Because he has traded with China since 1953 and made annual visits to China he is barred from the U.S. Every visa application is refused. Americans are able to meet Jack in the UK but not the U.S. Everything changes with the 1971 announcement from Washington that Nixon will visit China in 1972. Jack is now Persona Grata. He goes to the U.S. in December 1971 and is the centre of attention wherever he goes. Why? Because he knows about China. He is not an expert but there are no experts. He is familiar with the pace and norms of Chinese politics. He reads the policy announcements, meets their Ministers, talks to their businessmen, visits the Communes and talks late into the night with their Communist Party leaders.
This Chapter in Jack’s story leads as you know to Harvard and the invitation to address the College Graduates about China. His host, the Dean of the Graduate Students, explains to Jack that the arrangements have been arranged in a rush and he, the Dean, has not received any briefing notes to enable him to introduce Jack to the Students. “How would you like me to introduce you?”
Jack replies “Just tell them I am a Jew from Lithuania”
What was the connection between Jack, his mother from Lithuania, and the People’s Republic of China?
Read On.
THE EXPLANATION
There is no suggestion that China was reserved for the Jews. Or that being Jewish was an indispensable qualification for doing business with China. Not at all. Many non-Jews have been successful in going to China and developing business links with the new China. So what did Jack mean by even mentioning Lithuania. He was born in Bethnal Green in London not Vilnius in Lithuania. He was British not Lithuanian so why did he invoke Lithuania to explain the invitation extended to him in Moscow in April 1952 to visit China in June 1953.
Jack, himself, had been on a journey. His upbringing was unmistakeably Jewish. British Jewish but Jewish to the core. His father was from Poland. His mother from Russia. Until the age of eleven he attended only Jewish schools. He went to synagogue two even three times a week. He spoke Hebrew and Yiddish as well as English. He excelled at his studies – Jewish and non-Jewish. He led the prayers in the Youth Service at synagogue and played a leading role in teaching Jewish ritual to younger Jewish Children. His friends were Jewish. His social life centred around the Brady Maccabi Youth Clubs and he represented the Club on the soccer pitches.
AN AMUSING INTERLUDE
There was one amusing interlude; when he was seven years old and attending a Jewish Primary School his mother, a strong influence in his life, fell out with the Head Master and pulled young Jack – then known by the name given to him at birth, Israel (Perisky) – out of the school. On the way back to the family home she passed another school and knocked on the Head’s door. He had a vacancy. She put Jack into school and said she would collect him later that afternoon. She returned home and relayed the events to her friends. One recoiled in horror – “But that new school is a Catholic school”.
Rebecca fled out the front door, rushed to the school and pulled Jack out of his class. There was no way Rebecca was going to permit her son to be taught in a non-Jewish school. But what about Jack’s education? On the way from the Catholic school to the family home she recalled that there was another Jewish Primary nearby. With Jack in tow, she did a detour and pressed herself into the study of the new Head. Yes, he had a place. She deposited Jack and left him in his third school of the day – this time an orthodox Jewish school. She knew how to win. It was a family trait she ensured was passed to the youngest of her four children
THE DISLIKE AND THE UNLIKE
Let me pause regarding the family narrative and put the Jewish “thing” into perspective. A few years back I participated in an online course on anti-semitism. It was administered by the Tel-Aviv University. There were six sessions focusing on the origins and history of anti-semitism down the ages. Lecturers were Jewish and Non-Jewish.
There was much discussion on anti-semitism with many explanations offered by academics (Jewish and non-Jewish) drawn from across the world. One academic – an Israeli from Lancaster University in the UK – offered a definition which has stayed with me. ”Anti-semitism,” she said, “has its origins in The Dislike Of The Unlike.”
Two elements – The Dislike and The Unlike.
Who are the Unlike? People who stand out. People who are different. How different? Just different. Not violent or aggressive or arrogant or loud. Just different. But How Different? In one significant way Jews are different. They have strict dietary rules – both the food that is consumed and the manner in which it is prepared. Jews have been brought up to resist food that was “treph” – prepared with items that Jews were forbidden to consume and with utensils they were forbidden to use. This led to Jews being unable to accept invitations to eat meals with non-Jews. In this way Jews became “unlike” non-Jews. They did not mix at meal times – home or away. Once Jews were seen as “Unlike” it was only a short journey to turn the “unlike” label into the “dislike” label. Small things lead to big things at a local level and Small Differences are quicky magnified into Big Differences on the world stage. Hitler was quick to designate the Jews as the Unlike – The Enemy.
Back to Hackney and the East End and the Jewish narrative of their recent past – pre-Hitler – was marked by detachment, separation, incidents and violence. It led to a mindset of “Them” and “Us” that Mosley used in the East in the 1930’s to whip up a frenzy of anti-semitism that led Jews to fight back with a strong sense of their identity, their narrative and their history.
It was not always Bad News. In Jack’s street in Bethnal Green – Teesdale Street – one side of the street was Jewish and the other side was Irish. And they were friends. They played street football in the Winter and street cricket in the Summer. And when Jews came under attack in 1936 when Mosley’s Bully Boys – the Blackshirts – were given permission to march through the streets of the East End it was the Irish who stood alongside the Jews at Cable Street to force the marchers to retreat when they were chased and beaten up in the back streets of the surrounding area by an alliance of Jews, Irish and Dockers. The Unlike does not have to be a reason for the Dislike to flourish. Anti-Semitism can be stopped – especially when there is a coming together of people of different backgrounds as Cable Street proved.
JACK ON A JOURNEY
Back to Jack. He was on a journey. The arrival of Hitler in Germany and Mosley in the East End led him to ask searching questions about religion and politics and God and mass unemployment. He looked for an answer to the challenge of the Bully Boy Fascists in Hackney, Stepney, Dalson and Ridley Road Market. And it did not come from the Rabbis. Their advice to the Jewish flock was to keep a low profile; matters will pass; the threat will recede and people will return in peace and harmony to the neighbourhoods. But this did not happen. The challenge remained. Jack turned to the Left. He rejected the Jewish religion and became an Atheist and a Communist but he always remained a Jew.
Marxism provided a comprehensive world perspective – both at the street level and the threat from the Blackshirts and at the global level and the interaction of big Nations. Jack was on a journey – from the shtetl world of East European Jewry to the global world of the era defining struggle between Capitalism and Communism. It was at the core of his being. It permeated his consciousness, his mind set and his ambition. Jack was not unique – other Jews experienced the same change-of-life moments but today the focus is Jack and his life story and if you want to understand how he found himself at Harvard in 1972 you have to understand how he emerged from Russia and Poland with a beating pulse stirred to action by the challenges he and his family and friends experienced along the way.
JACK – JEWISH AND BRITISH
Jack was a British national from Bethnal Green but he was also, via his mother, a Jew from Lithuania and the pulse of determination and achievement was instilled in him in part by his experience on the streets of the East End but in the main from the experience of Jews down the Centuries that led him from Lithuania and Poland to Bethnal Green and then to Beijing. Jack’s life pulsated with challenge, intellect, determination and effort and it was a combination of all four that led him to introduce himself to the graduate students at Harvard with the words “You can best understand me and my life’s journey if you bear in mind that at heart I am a Jew from Lithuania”. Jack was Up and Running and China was in Full View.
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IN CHINA POST #630 I RETURN TO CHINA AND ISSUES OF CURRENT INTEREST.
GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON EXISTS TO INFORM ABOUT CHINA – WARTS AND ALL.
THE PERSPECTIVE IS BASICALLY POSITIVE AND THERE IS A CONVICTION THAT CHINA WILL PLAY AN INCREASINGLY MORE RELEVANT AND CONSTRUCTIVE ROLE IN OUR LIVES.
“WARTS AND ALL” BECAUSE CHINA IS NOT PERFECT. SOME IMPERFECTIONS ARE ADDRESSED BY CHINA AND SOME THEY PREFER TO CONCEAL. BUT THIS COLUMN IS A UK COLUMN WRITTEN BY A UK NATIONAL AND THE APPROACH IS DETACHED AND OBJECTIVE.
GRAHAM PERRY
