Inside China – From the Great Leap Backward to Huawei

By Chris Fraser OBE

This memoir is written from a Chinese speaker's and insider's viewpoint stretching over fifty years of working in and around China in both a public and private capacity. The writer saw tensions and chaos on the China Hong Kong Border in the wake of the Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic and during the murderous Cultural Revolution. Experiences of intelligence gathering and intelligence work related to China are coupled with insights into Chinese culture and politics including a little known coup attempt against the Chinese Government. The writer was present at the ceremonies for the Handover of HK to China in 1997 while working at the new British Consulate General.  
Involvement in outbound corporate investment from Hong Kong and China features in the book including Huawei's initial investment into UK. Practical advice for businesses entering the Chinese market including common pitfalls is highlighted including personal experiences of doing business in the PRC.    
A view of current Chinese politics and attitudes is provided at a time of international tensions where China is pushing the envelope around the World.    

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781800467767

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Copyright © 2020 Chris Fraser OBE

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781800467767

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To my wife Judy – through thick and thin

Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

Colonial Hong Kong – Early Days

CHAPTER TWO

Going Commando

CHAPTER THREE

Shandong in Hong Kong

CHAPTER FOUR

Drugs, Triads and Corruption

CHAPTER FIVE

The Great Escape from the Great Leap Forward

CHAPTER SIX

Immigration on the Border with China

CHAPTER SEVEN

Bonding with the Detectives

CHAPTER EIGHT

Special Branch and Marriage

CHAPTER NINE

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

CHAPTER TEN

The Soong and Other Dynasties

CHAPTER ELEVEN

China Watching and Leaving Hong Kong

CHAPTER TWELVE

Inside China in the 80s and Return to HK

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My Part in Bo Xilai’s Downfall and Outbound Investment from HK

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Handover of Hong Kong to China and Doing Business in Taiwan

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Founding ChinaEuro Associates and Huawei Arrives in the UK

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Working for Chinese Companies and Her Majesty’s Government

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Power Struggle in China and a Failed Coup

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Bingo for the Masses

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Doing Business in China: Pointers and Advice

EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

Fifty years of Chinese culture, politics and business from serving as a young police officer on the frontier between Hong Kong (HK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the famine-triggered Great Escape from the adjacent province of Guangdong, to the murderous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. From a Hong Kong Special Branch political analyst on China during Chairman Mao Zedong’s last days, and spooks in HK, to working for the British Government in HK and London at the time of the handover to China and beyond. Special Branch was abolished in Hong Kong after the handover to China but has recently been reconstituted to counter what is seen by the new regime as threats of a different nature. From a bizarre meeting with the rising star who became a member of the Chinese Politburo but conspired to overthrow the Chinese Government, to playing golf after a former Chinese Premier who was to be purged in the wake of the Tiananmen Square affair. Then a look at Chinese business practices including signing only the second international economic development agreement with the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the first wave of outbound Chinese corporate investment: a product of Deng Xiaoping’s Going Abroad policy. Not to mention the project to make bingo (tombola) Mainland China’s first venture into gambling outside lottery tickets since 1949 and handling Huawei’s controversial entry into the United Kingdom. In 2001 this Chinese corporate investor was viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat. The extraordinary economic progress of the PRC is balanced against a background of a reversal of civil liberties; there are lessons to be learned from history. A variety of other business ventures continue to this day involving Hong Kong emigration issues following recent protests, together with the British National (Overseas) passports issue in the territory. An often humorous insight into the challenges of Chinese business attitudes, style and culture through a lifetime of experience.

In between, there was marriage in HK, during the Cultural Revolution inspired disturbances, to the former Miss Hong Kong and niece of TV Soong, scion of the so-called Soong Dynasty and pre-Communism Chinese Finance Minister, said to be the World’s richest man in his time. TV’s sisters included Soong Mei Ling, wife of Nationalist China leader Chiang Kai-shek, who was Communist China Chairman Mao Zedong’s deadly rival, and Soong Ching Ling, Mao’s close colleague and wife of Sun Yat Sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic.

CHAPTER ONE

Colonial Hong Kong – Early Days

In 1961 expatriate Police Officers’ terms and conditions in the paramilitary Hong Kong Police Force in the then British Crown colony, meant that in the first three-and-a-half-year tour there was no home leave, a ban on getting married and usually one three minute phone call home per year at Christmas via Cable & Wireless telecommunications. I was no exception but as a twenty-year-old having spent time in a Scottish boarding school with spartan conditions and two years in 40 Commando, Royal Marines, with service in Malta and Libya, I was not deterred.

Within those three years my squad of expatriate and local Chinese probationary police inspectors had passed out of the Police Training School with a curriculum which included basic Cantonese language education for expatriate officers and become members of the multi-ethnic force family. I had spent time in a downtown Hong Kong Island Police Station, time stemming the flow of illegal immigrants from China during the Great Escape across the frontier with China, commanded a riot platoon, found myself in charge of Immigration at the main crossing point on the border with China and generated an interest in joining Special Branch, the Political Police in Chinese. My immersion into things Chinese had begun with a vengeance and my Cantonese language capability had benefited as a result.

Before all that and after military service, my father’s keen desire had been for me to get a proper job, bearing in mind I was refusing to go on to university. What do you actually want to do? he asked. I don’t really mind, I recall replying to his intense exasperation. But salvation came through the British press which carried advertisements at the time for what seemed to be exciting jobs in both the Kenya and Hong Kong colonial police forces. The attraction was there for another disciplined organisation career and Kenya seemed best at first glance with pictures of mounted officers galloping through the bush; I had been a keen horse rider in my younger days. I knew that Kenya was in Africa but had only a vague idea about Hong Kong. Fortunately I made the right decision as Kenya was later affected by the Mau Mau insurrection and independence and I found myself being interviewed in the Hong Kong Government offices in London for a post as a Probationary Inspector (or PI) in the Hong Kong Police Force, an armed force which was part of the colonial Hong Kong Government apparatus.

HK Police Insignia

Having been offered the job I was not deterred by my research into the Force by a letter from the Governor of Hong Kong in 1915 concerning European members of the Hong Kong Police. In the letter the Governor stated that it is unfortunately the case that only about 50% of the men enlisted as constables turn out as useful members of the Force, being unable in many cases to withstand the temptations, especially of overindulgence in alcoholic beverages. More research revealed that in the 1950s the colony was deemed by many residents to be governed by the chairman of the Hong Kong (and Shanghai) Bank, the chairman of the Jockey Club and the Governor in that order. I wondered what lay ahead.

Two months later my China story began and I found myself with a group of newly appointed British PIs on a British-made Comet passenger jet making a total of five stops in Frankfurt, Bahrain, Teheran, Delhi and Rangoon before landing at the old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, skimming over the rooftops of properties in Kowloon below. It was hot and humid in mid-August but the expatriate police officer meeting us reassured us by saying that large amounts of locally produced San Miguel beer would help us with the humidity. We took him at his word. San Mig, as the locals knew it, was founded in 1890 in Manila, Philippines, a Spanish colony at the time, well before the operation in Spain in the late 1940s.

On arrival at the Police Training School (PTS) in Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, I was not impressed by the sight of a very familiar drill square and rows of Nissen huts in which we were to be accommodated. Shades of Marines basic training in England. Again, I would form part of a squad with a squad instructor and a similar number of locally recruited Chinese PIs with whom we were to work for six months. The force in those days was, on a day-to-day basis, in effect run by British Chief Inspectors and PTS was no exception. Ours was a huge Scotsman who, after breakfast when we had had our first cultural shock seeing our Chinese colleagues balancing their runny fried eggs on their knives before slipping them whole into their mouths, gave us an inkling of what to expect. In his briefing he told us that we would be well advised to go to the local Wanchai girlie bar area to get the dirty water off your chests before more formally going through the curriculum of Law (largely based on English Law), Police General Orders, Drill and Weapons training on the .38 Smith & Wesson standard issue revolver and M1 carbine (a light weight weapon widely used by US forces in the Vietnam War), Cantonese language training and so on. Cantonese is the common dialect of Hong Kong, Macau and adjacent Guangdong Province and is also spoken by many Overseas Chinese around the world whose forebears originated in South China. There are numerous dialects around the Chinese nation, including Mandarin in provinces further north which is also the lingua franca of the country. Shanghainese and Cantonese speakers, for example, will not understand each other but the Chinese written language is the same throughout, with the proviso that it is written in simplified characters in the People’s Republic of China and traditional characters in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

In theory, failure to pass the final Cantonese exams at the end of the tour meant dismissal but this rule was rarely exercised. At PTS, Cantonese classes used a textbook written many years previously by a Jesuit priest, Father O’Melia, with the romanised form of Chinese rather than Chinese characters, as we were learning colloquial Cantonese for everyday use.

Churches are higher mountains and you have damaged my microscope and put it out of order were particularly useless phrases from the good father’s textbook. Once graduated from PTS, expatriate probationary inspectors attached to police stations were assigned retired Chinese teachers who turned up at the police station by arrangement to continue Cantonese tuition in return for a modest allowance of $30HK per week paid by the Government. Many of their students though, who were learning the language on the job or by means of a sleeping dictionary (a local Chinese girlfriend), were happy to tell teachers not to bother to turn up and to keep the fee. Interestingly, the HK Government and other British colonial Governments in Southeast Asia used the Chinese Commercial Code (CCC) which allocated four digit numbers to individual Chinese characters to provide an accurate way of identifying Chinese names and other characters. My own Cantonese became fluent due to certain postings later on at the border with China where my Chinese colleagues spoke little or no English.

The second-in-command or Deputy Commandant of the Police Training School was the most senior Chinese police officer in the force at the time. John Tsang, who had recently returned from a course at Cambridge University in UK, was prominent around the training school when we would salute him on the parade ground but one day was nowhere to be seen. At the time we did not realise that he had been arrested by the police Special Branch (SB) as a sleeper agent for the Chinese intelligence service (CHIS). Tsang was detained by SB in the Victoria Road Detention Centre where espionage suspects were incarcerated for interrogation before deportation to China. This duly happened and nothing more was heard of him until 1967 during the