Queen Elizabeth II: Chinese officials were ‘very rude’
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Queen Elizabeth II spoke with Metropolitan Police Commander Lucy D’Orsi in the garden of Buckingham Palace in London on Tuesday. Queen Elizabeth II was overheard on video describing Chinese officials as “very rude to the ambassador” in a conversation with a senior police officer at a Buckingham Palace event celebrating her birthday.
LONDON » Britain’s 90-year-old monarch has made a rare foray into political affairs, being caught on film characterizing Chinese officials as “very rude” in their dealings with British counterparts during a state visit last year.
Queen Elizabeth II made the unguarded comments Tuesday while talking to a senior police officer at a rain-soaked garden party on the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
With uncharacteristic bluntness — rarely if ever heard in public — the queen said the Chinese had not dealt properly with Barbara Woodward, the British envoy to China.
“They were very rude to the ambassador,” Elizabeth said.
The comments were recorded by a palace-authorized cameraman working for three British networks and distributed to broadcasters under a pool arrangement allowing them to use the material. Two reporters close to the queen did not hear the comments but they were easily discernible on the videotape.
Elizabeth’s broadside was unusual on several fronts: As a constitutional monarch, she is prohibited from being actively involved in politics. She has assiduously earned a reputation for great discretion, and it is completely out of character for her to publicly criticize another country’s diplomats.
If anything, she has been so careful to adhere strictly to her defined constitutional role that some commentators say they have no idea what she thinks about world affairs.
It is now clear, however, that she was at least annoyed by some of the positions taken by the Chinese delegation during a state visit that was vital for Britain’s political and business leaders, who seek ever-closer ties with China to bolster trade.
Both sides responded quickly to the break in the queen’s neutral approach — by downplaying its importance and asserting that the state visit had indeed been a triumph.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, asked about the queen’s remarks at a daily news briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, declined to address them directly, but said Chinese President Xi Jinping had made a “very successful visit” to Britain last year.
“The working teams from both sides made huge efforts to make this possible. This effort has been highly recognized by both China and Britain,” Lu said.
Despite Lu’s comments, China appeared to regard the queen’s comments as sensitive. Information about the remarks was difficult to find on China’s heavily censored Internet and government monitors cut the signal of the British Broadcasting Corp. when it reported on the comments.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the visit “got a bit stressful on both sides” but had been “highly successful.”
He said that “our relationship with China is very strong and has been greatly strengthened by the success of that visit.”
The remarks were recorded at one of the queen’s summer garden parties, where she traditionally greets a long line of guests as she makes her way to the royal tent for tea and sandwiches.
It is customary for a cameraman working for UK networks to walk in front of the queen and record her interactions with guests. The material, rarely before deemed newsworthy, is later provided to the networks for possible use.
In the video, an official introduced the queen to police Commander Lucy D’Orsi and explained that the officer was in charge of policing for Xi’s visit in October.
The queen quickly responded: “Oh! Bad luck.”
The official told the queen that D’Orsi had been “seriously undermined by the Chinese” in the handling of the visit.
When D’Orsi asked if the queen knew it had been a “testing time,” the monarch interjected: “I did.”
The officer recalled a moment when Chinese officials walked out of a meeting with Woodward, the ambassador, and told the British the trip was off.
“They walked out on both of us,” D’Orsi said.
“Extraordinary,” the queen said.
“It was very rude and undiplomatic I thought,” D’Orsi said.
Both the Metropolitan police and the palace refused to comment on what they described as private conversations. The palace stressed that Xi’s visit had been “extremely successful.”
British officials had added layers of pomp and splendor — including a state banquet at the palace — during Xi’s four-day state visit.
Xi was welcomed with a 41-gun artillery salute, and taken to Buckingham Palace in a royal gilded carriage drawn by white horses.
The queen gave Xi and his wife a personal tour of the Royal Collection at the palace. She gave them a special collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets and spoke glowingly of the two countries’ “global partnership” at the elaborate state dinner.
There were no public hints of tensions at the time, although Prince Charles — the heir to the throne, and a supporter of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama shunned by the Chinese — did not attend the gala banquet.
The two countries signed more than 30 billion pounds ($46 billion) in trade agreements during the trip, and Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain would be China’s “partner of choice” in the West.
This is not the first time British royals have been caught making undiplomatic remarks about the Chinese. Prince Charles branded Chinese diplomats “appalling old waxworks” in a private journal entry that had described the 1997 ceremony to hand Hong Kong back to Chinese rule.
In 1986, Prince Philip reportedly told British exchange students in China they would get “slitty eyes” if they stayed in China too long.
Associated Press writers Isolda Morillo in Beijing and Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
34 responses to “Queen Elizabeth II: Chinese officials were ‘very rude’”
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As a constitutional monarch, she is prohibited from being actively involved in politics.
Not that any monarch is relevant, but how is commenting on someone’s official “rudeness” considered political?
According to the Chinese it is since they pretty much censored all of those comments already on their Internet in their country.
The Queen was upset because she overheard Chinese Officials talking about fried corgi. Diplomats quickly assured Her Majesty that royal corgis were never included in the trade deal. What they actually said was the food at the state dinner tasted like dog food. As it turns out, something was very weird about the pate, and all of this got lost in translation.
This is news?
Have you seen their tourists? Makes sense why their officials are rude.
Jeez. Mainland Chinese tourists are the WORST. Chinese from literally everywhere else can behave. but Mainland? *facepalm*
agree..I work in Waikiki part-time and yes, the rudest customers tend to be mainland Chinese. They have a certain contempt for Hawaiians and their culture as I have sadly noted in here. Many tell me Hawaii has zero culture or anything to do. They want Vegas. Yet, because our state “leaders” put all of their efforts into tourism, we are stuck doing whatever the tourist dollars tells us to do. Sad. But that is life for our phony “leaders.”
Funny .. I thought it was you that had a certain contempt for Hawaiians and their culture. Between you, fat ken and diver dave and Akina the traitor I’m not sure who’s worse.
To a constitutional monarch it probably is. To the rest of us in the real world who’ve encountered chinese tourists, it’s common knowledge.
I hate to say it, but when you live where there is so many people who have to be rude to get anywhere. I have been there many times and around the world. Chinese people are pushy and rude. My good friend who is Chines is the first one to complain about it.
*Mainland PRC Chinese.
Don’t go about sullying Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Indonesian and US Chinese with association with those carpetbaggers from the PRC.
Yes…Her Majesty was specifically referring to the entourage of that kleptocrat egomaniac Xi Jinping
And that’s Madam Mao of Manoa! When some of us comment about her, you all say it says more about us! What it says is that we are not afraid to stand up against her, when she is setting agendae for UH taxpayer dollars, or EWC, or now HPU! Entitlement! Especially, if you are the daughter of a military official in Beijing! Steam rolling anybody and everybody! This doesn’t say anything about this “poster” or the many posters commenting here! It says something about these particular “mainland Chinese,” Asian settler colonials, buying up the world and dominating us all! Time to have an anti colonial movement! And no this commenting poster is not channeling Trump! If Trump wins, China will rule the world! All the women dealing cards in his casinos are Chinese! And he is a great client of Lillian Too!
yikes!
And just how do you discern a mainland chinese from one from Hong Kong or somewhere else? Chinese people look and sound the same to me no matter which country they came from.
Easy. How they group together, their volume when talking to each other, their dress style (particularly easy to tell), how they (if they) form lines. There are a lot of signs that will let you know where they are from is you simply pay attention. But the easiest in the customs line is just looking at their passports, if they aren’t PRC. PRC in custom lines don’t form lines like everyone else.
What did she expect? Its common knowledge.
The Queen lives in a completely controlled and managed world, not the real world. Who knows what she expected.
Wonder what her reaction was when she rec’d O’s CD of his speeches?
90 year olds are great – they can say anything they want and no one should ever prevent them from speaking their mind. The world would be a lot better off if we threw political correctness out the door and everyone spoke like a 90 year old.
Always thought the Brits were noted for their stiff upper lips and bluntness? Not wishy-washy and lack of transparency like most politicians?
That’s why we love cojef.
Queen just spoke up on something everyone on earth knows well.
Yup, rude, crude, that’s what the Chinese are. But then again, I would be rude and crude to the British if I’m Chinese after what they did in China – white, racist, colonial Imperialists who plundered the Chinese.
Agreed – one thing that really sticks in my mine is the opium wars where the British forced opium onto the Chinese. The British government essentially became a wide scale drug dealer.
And then there were the non-white Japanese who colonized and murdered as many as 300,000 civilians in Nanking alone.
Nanking Massacre
And following that, there was Mao and the “Great Leap Forward” with up to 45,000,000 deaths because of it. So what else is new?
Just takes time and education for the Chinese tourists to conform to proper etiquette when in public. The Japanese tourists were at one time accused of the same lack of etiquette when they visited the U.S. Now, they are generally seen as model tourists. The same will hold true for the Chinese. You get that way when competing for services in any crowded country like China.
Totally different cultures with the Chinese being the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ethical and courteous behavior. Unlike the Japanese, it’s ingrained into their genetic makeup and no amount of education is going to change that.
“Unlike the Japanese, it’s ingrained into their genetic makeup and no amount of education is going to change that.”
That doesn’t explain why Chinese tourists from literally everywhere else on the planet don’t behave like PRC Chinese.
Stop being a racist piece of trash and get on the PRC hating train like the rest of us.
Wow, I agree with choyd, partly, although he ignorantly displays his bigotry in characterizing all “PRC” as uniformly rude.
Palani, the PRC tourists have kicked us out the Throne of “World’s Worst Tourist” for a reason.
And have you been to China?
Boy do some of us who have been at the receiving end of ex communists, now Capital crazy Beijingists, know the rudeness and aggression and sense of entitlement! Throwing an 85 year old woman out of her condo, taking hold of a house on which a wife had put a downpayment, throwing her out while she was sick w terminal cancer, having fits on Kapiolani chemo staff, if they hadn’t killed her! Rudeness is putting it mildly! They do this! This is not like the gentle Chinese folk of Hawaii! No siree! This is called I will have my way regardless of who you are, monarch or poor sick old lady! We saw it all, care givers, nurses, church support staff, all who were steam rolled over, husbands and lovers who were lied to and friends who were led to believe it was the so called lover’s wish! Madam Mao of Manoa wrecked 3 homes and some gullible ones of you still support her and think the rest of us are being racist, when women like her, make your bosses speak anti Japanese comments about the Japanese in Hawaii legislature! Oh for the pushiness of Beijingist aggression! The queen hasn’t seen anything at all! And we sign these deals and let them buy us put, while they keep digging for what little gold we have! And yes you’ll object to these comments, but just wait till you are on the receiving end!
That’s funny – I have seen rude Chinese but I have also seen lots of rude British people. Maybe the Queen is angry that the Chinese have supplanted the British as No. 1 on the rudest people list.
I eat at Mei Sum Dim Sum at least once a week, those wahines sum rude sista’s there! But I keep smiling and saying Aloha, Mahalo’s even after they tell me, ” You wait, next cart, you try dis, mo betta.” Don’t want any special sauce in my sum sum!