With nearly 50 years of diplomatic experience, Liu Xiaoming, who served as ambassador of China to the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2021, considers promoting the deepening of understanding between the Chinese and people of other countries a top priority for China’s diplomats.
But the wider public mostly knows him for a comparison he made eight years ago in an opinion piece for the . Liu likened Japanese militarism to’s arch-villain Lord Voldemort following then Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine where Japan’s war dead, including 14 Class-A World War II war criminals, are worshiped. Liu wrote at the time, “If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of , representing the darkest parts of that nation’s soul.”
