GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
CHINA AND THE FOREIGN MEDIA
02 NOVEMBER 2026. CHINA POST #645
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TOPIC
CHINA AND THE UK – PATHS TO GOVERNANCE
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CHINA AND THE UK – HISTORICAL JOURNEYS
Where we are today depends on the journey we made yesterday. The past leaves its mark in a significant way. An obvious truism.
The UK and China reach today having travelled quite different paths.
THE UK JOURNEY
With the UK, the modern story commences with 1215 and the signing at Runnymede in the South of England of the oft-referred-to Magna Carta when a handful of powerful land-owning barons read the riot act to King John and compelled him to relinquish some – but not all – of his inherited autocratic power. A revolution of sorts was underway.
Feudalism began to dig roots. In due course the handful of Big Families – who formed the core of the land-owning aristocracy – found their power was eroded as a thrusting new commercial class – the landed gentry – challenged the Barons and the Dukes in the English Civil War 1642-1649. The Royalist supporters of King Charles were defeated by the Roundhead supporters of Parliament and power moved from the Monarch and the landowners to the Rising Gentry expressed through the beginnings of the Westminster system of Government.
Under the impetus created by the Industrial Revolution from 1760 onwards, power moved from the Old Landowners to the New Industrialists who, themselves, came under pressure, in due course, from the growing factory population to widen the political system of government to embrace the principal of One Man One Vote (OMOV) – a journey that took from 1832 to 1949 to complete.
The Westminster system of Democracy took route as the Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers (the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary) formed the core elements of the system of government in the UK.
We, in the UK, are all marked by that political journey which have included bouts of separation and independence by the people of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Parliamentary sovereignty is the dominant characteristic based on OMOV and General Elections and the ebb and flow of political parties. It is accompanied by the ever-present interplay between the media, the political parties and the people’s independent expression of views. It has been a long journey which has no end date because History does not end.
THE CHINA JOURNEY
China is also the product of a journey – but one undertaken in quite different social, economic and political conditions resulting in a political system today which is quite different from that of the UK.
China’s history spans civilisations and dynasties. The earliest confirmed historical period begins with the Shang dynasty (c. 1250 BC), followed by the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 – 256 BC), an era that introduced the Mandate of Heaven and laid the philosophical foundations for Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism.
China was first unified under a centralized imperial state by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC and, subsequently, the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) established a long-lasting imperial order which institutionalized Confucianism and fostered major technological advancements such as paper-making.
Disunity intervened until imperial unity was restored by the Sui dynasty (581–618) and the Tang dynasty (618–907), a golden age of poetry, culture, and cosmopolitan trade ensued. The Song dynasty (960–1279) followed, driving major advancements in woodblock printing, technology, and the imperial examination system.
The final imperial lineage, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1912), expanded China’s territory to its imperial peak before suffering severe internal instability and military defeats to foreign powers in the 19th century.
The 1911 Revolution ended imperial rule and established the Republic of China (ROC) led by Sun Yatsen. His death in 1925 triggered a Civil War between the Communist Party – formed in 1921 – and the Kuomintang now led by Chiang Kaishek. Three bouts of Civil War ensued with the Kuomintang between 1927 and 1949 – interspersed by the National Patriotic War against Japan between 1937 and 1945 during which China suffered 14 million deaths.
On 1 October 1949 Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, proclaimed the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with the remnants of the KMT fleeing to Taiwan. Following the Cultural Revolution, the PRC instituted reform and opening up under Deng Xiaoping starting in 1978, transforming the country into the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
THE UK AND CHINA SYSTEMS – QUITE DIFFERENT
The political systems of the UK and China are quite different because their respective historical journeys have been quite different. In the UK, the Magna Carta of 1215, the 16th Century Civil War and the 1832 Great Reform Act, have given the UK its parliamentary character that dominates its political status today. By the same token, China’s Century of National Humiliation, the Opium Wars (which lambast the British in particular) and the coming to power of the Communist Party of China in 1949 in revolutionary conditions have given China its authoritarian character that dominates its political status today.
THE TIANANMEN DEATHS – YESTERDAY AND TODAY
The British media regularly attack the Chinese system of government for being undemocratic and cite, in particular, the Tiananmen Deaths in 1989 in support of their demonisation of China. No question – Tiananmen 1989 was a low point in the history of China’s Communist Party. The brutality of the PLA military putdown which – according to the New York Times correspondent in Tiananmen in June 1989 – resulted in deaths of between 400 and 800 Chinese protestors handed to China’s Western critics a public relations gift on a par with the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Unquestionably it was a Big Negative to which critics of China regularly return for material to undermine any attempt by China to point to its achievements in creating an increasingly prosperous country.
Tiananmen 1989 is a fact of life. It does not go away. It cannot be avoided. But China Post Tiananmen is also a fact of life. It, too, will not go away because China’s upward surge continues to make headlines.
And here there is relevant evidence – as graphic of China’s positivity today as the Tiananmen Deaths is a graphic of China’s negativity in 1989. The evidence is contained in surveys regularly conducted in China by non-Chinese polling companies which record the widespread support in China for the Chinese government – the Pew Institute, the Harvard Kennedy Institute and the Edelman Trust Barometer which measures the popularity of governments with their peoples.
The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer China Report released in April 2026 (co-produced with Tsinghua University), recorded that China’s Comprehensive Trust Index reached 80, compared to a global average of 57 across 28 surveyed countries. Past reports have historically shown trust in the Chinese government scaling between 89% and 91% (such as 91% in 2022), placing it significantly higher than numbers reported in Western nations like the United States.
The UK and Western countries generally prefer to cite the Tiananmen Deaths as evidence of current repression and brutality by the Chinese authorities. The Deaths were a bad moment in time for the Chinese Government and should not be whitewashed out of modern Chinese history but in the thirty-seven years that have elapsed the Government of China have done much to rebuild relationships with the people and the above polling evidence is indisputable.
It confirms a close and sustained relationship between Government and People in China today which goes a long way to explaining China’s post 2000 economic surge. The UK media does not want to accept the polling evidence and prefers, instead, to repeatedly recall the 1989 moment in order to damage the reputation of today’s China Government.
THE JEREMY PAXMAN MOMENT
In 2008 Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics. Jeremy Paxman was sent by the BBC to conduct interviews with Chinese citizens in order to assess the state of life in China – then at an early stage of its ”Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” experiment. Paxman, at his request, met in an up-market Bar in Shanghai with four Chinese female entrepreneurs. It was apparent from the tone of his interviewing that he was looking for evidence of repression or censorship. Paxman was not getting the evidence of bad news that he craved. He was becoming irritated and eventually burst out and said “but you can’t vote to get rid of your government”. One of the four women responded, with quite clear surprise “But why would we want to change our government?”
The Chinese female entrepreneur was puzzled by Paxman’s question – and Paxman was puzzled by the female entrepreneur’s reply. It was a moment in time when Western political norms came face-to-face with China’s political reality. Eighteen years on, the moment remains an eloquent measure of the considerable gap between Chinese and UK political attitudes.
IS CHINA OPPRESSIVE TODAY?
The West wants to believe that China today is oppressive, totalitarian and anti-democratic. The reality is different. A dictatorship needs the wholehearted support of the people to raise 800 million of its citizens out of poverty or to enable 200 million of its people the opportunity to take holidays abroad – the prediction of Travelex, one of the West’s biggest international travel companies. There is a secret side to China – as there is with all other countries with varying degrees of intensity. But China could not reach its current peaks of achievement by committing large numbers of its citizens to prolonged and unpopular detention and at the same time encourage 200 million – and rising – to freely travel overseas. It does not add up.
In turn, the British One Man One Vote system, in place since 1832, is popular with the British people who, despite a degree of political strife over the last decade, uphold their right to vote at Local and Parliamentary elections.
The citizens of the UK view China through the prism of the British parliamentary system and Chinese citizens view the UK through the prism of the Chinese Communist Party system.
TENSIONS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS
The British system is popular with the British and the Chinese system is popular with the Chinese This leads to tensions, misunderstandings and political conflict. Or what we call in the UK ‘Yaaboo Politics’ where the dominant characteristic is to belittle, humiliate and insult the opponent. Reason flies out of the window as both sides reach for new lows of aggression and antipathy in their increasingly tense exchanges.
At the end of the day, the test is What Works? Which system delivers best for its people? And here there is a valid comparison to make. People in the West are tired of reading about China’s surge in economic growth which has brought about quite unexpected achievements in the quality of life but they are a fact of life.
China’s pluses (+) have been mentioned much in recent years; the 800 million people who have left poverty behind them; the 200 million people who are expected to travel abroad in 2030; the rapid increase in the construction of roads, ports, railways; the large-scale dam construction and the surge in renewable energy, wind turbines, non-petrol using electric cars. The surge in the number of Chinese STEM graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and PhDs. And the recent attention given to the 83.4 mile waterway opened to navigation on September 16, allowing cargo from inland provinces to reach the sea without taking a roughly 560km detour via Guangzhou, the capital of neighbouring Guangdong province.
CHINA’S NEGATIVES
This Column is always quick to remind its readers that China still has problems to encounter – the damage caused to the economy by substantial losses in the property sector; youth unemployment and the persistently low levels of domestic consumption. There are never overlooked. China is tackling each of the Three Negatives but more time will be required to prove to its critics in the UK that the Chinese system is resilient. The prevailing mood in China is clearly positive and not negative – confirmed by the polling referred to above and undertaken in China by non-Chinese companies.
AND THE UK TODAY
And what is the prevailing mood of the people in the UK? A sequence of names of recent Prime Ministers is often trotted out to suggest significant political problems – Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer and Burnham. With each new arrival in office at #10 Downing Street there is an avalanche of political reporters keen to predict his/her ultimate failure. They greet their arrival in office with praise ever ready to bring about their decline and fall. One is reminded of the praise that greeted Jesus on his arrival in the Promised Land by followers who were at the same time fingering in their pockets for the nails for his eventual crucifixion.
THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING
Going forward the prediction is that the focus in the UK will continue to be One Man One Vote and the focus in China will continue to be on the leading role of the Party. Neither side will persuade the other to change. So the focus will move from ‘Which System is More Democratic‘ to ‘Which System Delivers Best For Its People’.
The well-known English metaphor comes to mind – The Proof Of The Pudding is in the Eating. Which system delivers prosperity and optimism to its people? – the UK or China?
GRAHAM PERRY
