GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
06 JULY 2026. CHINA POST #628
CHINA AND THE FOREIGN MEDIA
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A SUMMARY OF THIS ISSUE – CHINA POST #628;-
JACK PERRY, HIS JEWISHNESS AND CHINA
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- INTRODUCTION
In this China Post – #628 – I commence my focus on Jack Perry’s journey from Hackney to Beijing between 1915 and 1952. How did a man who left school at the age of 14 to start work sweeping the floors of a Dress Factory in London’s East End become – 22 years later – China’s preferred choice as their #1 Business Partner?
No Matriculation exams to his name; No University degree. No Professional qualification; No International Trade experience. So how did it happen? What was Jack’s career path that led him from earning less than £1 a week as a warehouse assistant in 1929 to being invited to become China’s Trade Partner of Choice in 1951. This is a serious question. Yes, there is family pride. Jack was my father but there is a story to tell. How? Where? Who? When?
- JACK PERRY GOES TO THE U.S IN 1948 1950 1972
Let me jump ahead in time and start with an incident in 1972 that happened in Boston Massachusetts. Bear with me – it is relevant. Jack had family in the U.S. and he made two visits (the second with his wife, Doris,) – in 1947 and 1950 to the U.S. Whilst in New York on both occasions Jack spent time with members of his mother’s family who left Russia in the late 1880’s and settled in New York and St Louis. Jack also met some prominent Left Wing names including Paul Robeson, Arthur Miller, Howard Fast and Sam Wanamaker. At that time Jack was building a successful business in the UK as manufacturer of Ladies Dresses so he did have an eye open for the business possibility of promoting the sale of ladies clothes into the U.S. market, but Family and Politics was the main thrust of those two early visits to the U.S.
- FAST FORWARD TO 1971
Now Fast Forward to 1971. By this time Jack had made annual visits to China from 1952 and this counted against him when he sought in 1954 to again visit the U.S. He was Persona Non Grata. His application for a visa was refused – the reason was his ongoing business links with China. The U.S. had a blanket ban on China for everybody including their own citizens. From 1952 Jack applied for a visa to go to the U.S. but the answer was always No!.
It is now November 1971 and the White House announces that President Nixon will make a breakthrough visit to China in February 1972. The night of the announcement Jack received a phonecall from a close friend and prominent Wall St banker at Brown Brothers Harriman – Robert Roosa – urging him to go to the U.S. Embassy – then in Grosvenor Square, London W.1. – and apply anew for a visa. “No Chance” – said Jack. “Wrong” – says Roosa. “All Bets Are Off. Everything has changed, I am sure you will be given a visa to come to the U.S. You are needed here. Nobody knows anything about China.”
- JACK IN THE U.S.
Roosa was right. Jack was issued with a visa and he made arrangements to fly to New York. Everywhere he went on that 1971 visit he was treated as a celebrity – “The Man who has Visited China each year since 1953”. And bear in mind in the U.S. in 1971, just three months before Nixon touched down in Beijing, there was a complete dearth of knowledge about China. No U.S. national of any description was permitted by the State Department to travel to China. Kissinger in his secret 1971 visit was the first since 1949.
Jack was wined and dined as personnel from the Senate, the CIA, the FBI, the media and Big Business, rubbed shoulders with him eager to access his knowledge about China. The U.S. had a big China deficit – no businessman or academics or media personalities or Senators or diplomats or students or anybody had been permitted to enter China. The announcement in November 1971 that Nixon would go to China in February 1972 changed everything including the ban on Jack from resuming his visits to family and friends in the U.S.
Jack enjoyed the attention. He felt vindicated. The U.S needed to engage with China and the U.S. had to make room for Jack Perry because his knowledge and experience of China now made him a much sought after speaker from East Coast to West Coast. Not name dropping but to convey an idea of the importance of Jack’s China experience he engaged on that first visit with Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Dole, and he became a close friend of the man responsible for the wording of President Kennedy’s Presidential Address in 1960 “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” – Theodore Sorensen.
Wherever he went, Jack was peppered with questions – Why is Nixon going? Will he meet Mao? What about the unfinished War in Vietnam? How will the issue of Taiwan be handled? Is the Communist Party in Control? Who will succeed Mao? Will Americans be allowed to visit China? When will China dispense with the Little Red Book? Will Chinese Nationals be allowed to visit the U.S.? The questions flowed because the interest was there. China was big news.
Jack was often addressed as an “Expert on China”. He had a response.
“There are no experts on China – only relative degrees of ignorance and maybe I am a little less ignorant than most”
- JACK IS INVITED TO HARVARD
Whilst in New York, Jack received a surprise phonecall from Harvard University. Would Jack, at short notice, attend a seminar for 100 graduate students to answer questions about China? Jack accepts. He is feeling so good. Left School aged 14 and with no later University experience and yet here he is talking to Harvard Graduates about International Affairs. Bear with me – I am getting to the point but the preamble. – the setting – is important. Context is everything.
Jack takes the train to Boston and he is ushered into the office of the Dean of Harvard University. A warm welcome ensues. There is a Panel of three speakers; – first Senator Stuart Symington who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is the Senate’s Go-To man on China – but he has never been to China; he has never met a Chinese diplomat. The second speaker is former U.S. to Japan, Ambassador Reischauer. He has kept abreast of daily news from China whilst stationed in Tokyo but, like Symington, he has never been to China nor engaged with any China National. Both are introduced as the U.S. “Experts on China”. Jack is the third speaker with nineteen years of annual visits to China.
The Dean introduces Jack to the two fellow Panel Members and then turns very apologetically to Jack and says “Mr Perry, I am very pleased to welcome you to Harvard. China features prominently in the News and Harvard has arranged a Seminar for our graduates to provide knowledge and information about China, a country none of us have been permitted to visit – your presence here today as a person who has visited China annually since 1953 is therefore most welcome.
Everything has been arranged speedily and I am afraid that I have not received any career details that I can rely upon for an introduction. How would you like me to introduce you to our graduates?”
Jack replied “Just tell them that I am a Jew from Lithuania”
The Dean choked, Symington threw a glance at Reischauer. Jack said nothing. At that time Harvard did have a reputation for active anti-semitism although that was not the reason for Jack’s response.
The Dean gathered himself. “I don’t understand. What does being Jewish have to do with an introduction to China?”
Jack kept his composure. He knew what he was doing. He replied ”Everything. You just introduce me as a Jew from Lithuania and I will do the explaining”
A great moment. The US Academic world rocked by an answer that reverberated around the portals of Harvard.
- JACK AND HIS JEWISHNESS
And you the reader will be puzzled. After all – what has being a Jew from Lithuania got to do with selling wool tops to China (Jack’s first item of business with China in 1952). There is a definable and relevant link. This narrative does not assert that you had to be Jewish to succeed in China. Many non-Jewish businessmen have built successful careers in China in recent years to disprove any such suggestion. For Jack in 1952 had acquired a strength of character and an understanding of history which provided him with the fortitude to succeed. It was an uphill battle. Jack faced opposition from the British Government; the Korean War pitted Chinese soldiers against British soldiers; Jack was putting his family at risk by deciding to start an entirely new commercial undertaking and he had to convince people he had never previously encountered – international bankers, insurance businessman, politicians. He also had to learn a new commercial language – letters of credit, bills of lading, currency exchange rates, underwriters, forwarding agents. Everything was new. Everything was a challenge. Jack was ready for the challenge in part because his life up until 1952 had been marked by his status as a Jew. Being Jewish prepared Jack for the challenge of building a new business based on a new country and a Communist country that he had never experienced.
- JACK AND HIS JEWISH IDENTITY
Jack in 1951 – when he first met Dr Ji Chaoding – was a non-religious Jew. He did not believe in the existence of God or the writings of Josephus. That had not always been the case for in his formative years – up to 1933 (a significant year in Jack’s life as will become clear) he had been a prize Jewish student. He learned Hebrew; he was a regular attendee at Synagogue; he complied willingly with his parent’s wishes to maintain a kosher home. He observed all the Jewish High Days and Holy Days. He was regularly called upon to take the youth service in synagogue on Saturday mornings. He was Jewish to the core.
Non-Jews were not absent from his life and he regularly played street football and street cricket on the back streets of Bethnal Green with his Irish neighbours. He was brought up in Teesdale Street where one side of the road was Jewish and the other side of the road was Irish. They mixed – at street level – but rarely frequented each other’s houses. There were no tensions, no animosities, no anti-semitism but an acknowledged separation.
There is one significant negative in Jack’s narrative which turned into a positive, Throughout his life Jack suffered from asthma – a serious bronchial condition. It laid him low and he would be compelled to stay at home. At that time – from 1922 onwards – Jack would be at home in bed. This was the 1920’s. No Television, Limited Radio. No Computers. No Mobile Phones. No Laptops , No graphic comics. Lots of Nothing. His mother – herself uneducated but alert and determined – decided Jack’s promising education would not falter. She had heard that the reading of books was good for the young mind. She went to the local library with a list of books in her hand compiled by an educated friend – Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Kidnapped and later Dickens, HG Wells, Swift and George Bernard Shaw.’
Jack’s mother was quite forceful. She returned from the Library with six books at a time. “Read them in 14 days!” Jack did as he was told and in two weeks he received a set of replacement books. A Bad Thing – Asthma – was turned into a Good Thing – a young mind exposed to the English and U.S. classic works of Literature. Undoubtedly this accelerated Jack’s love of the English language and of the ideas that flowed from the pens of the best English and American writers and dramatists. I am sure that the intensity of the daily diet of books played an important part in developing Jack’s brain and intellect and played a significant part in enabling Jack to master, without a school or university education, the ideas of Marx Engels, Lenin and Mao and to acquire an acute understanding of the ebb and flow of History.
BUT WHAT HAS LITHUANIA GOT TO DO WITH HIS WORK IN CHINA?
TO BE CONTINUED
GRAHAM PERRY
