David Cameron comes to visit

             The massive interest in China from the UK side has culminated this week in the Prime Minister David Cameron visiting China almost a month after London major Boris Johnson also paid a flying visit, encouraging Brits to start learning Mandarin, since China is the future.

             I nearly missed this whole visit, and if it hadn't been for my professor who alerted me about an hour before Cameron's arrival, I would not have known about it. He informed me that not only was he coming to Shanghai, but that he was going to be holding a talk with students on our campus! This was followed by a bit of a wild goose chase, since my professor didn't know the exact details of when and where the talk would take place. After wandering around and talking to a range of not-very-helpful policemen, who didn't seem to have a clue why they were there (or didn't want to share the details), we found a more friendly policeman (with YZ's help) who eventually helped us pinpoint the right building, which was barely a few hundred metres from my lab.

              There was a large queue of people, but it turned out that apparently only Chinese students had been made aware of this visit, because they wanted an audience of Chinese undergraduates. The meeting was designed so that they could ask him questions about the new visa schemes laid out by the government, which would make it easier for them to study in the UK. In addition, you had to register by the previous morning, in order for you to be vetted (we presume). So after many failed attempts to bargain with the unyielding Chinese security staff with a couple of other Westerners I found interested in getting in, we were about to give up. Even the guy from Wales who remembered to bring his British passport seemed to have no luck with waving it around conspicuously.

               We got lucky as the political entourage had started to arrive and a very kind English civil servant lady (I suddenly had flashbacks of various "In the Thick of It" scenes in my head when I first saw them) took pity on us, and negotiated our entry into the venue. Thank goodness a combination of English politeness and genuine joy at finding other Brits in Asia meant that they were very sympathetic, and once they realised our plight, things happened very quickly and they were able to get us through. I'm sure it must have had something to do with my new acquaintance's talking skills, and my emphasis on the fact that the very reason why I was here was due to the Sino-UK Higher Education Research Partnership, set up by Michael Gove (probably one of the only good things he's ever done) presumably due to the current government's very target approach to improving relations with China. I get the feeling that my trip is probably part of a very large movement decided upon by the government, towards embedding a deep financial relationship with the East. It has not gone unnoticed by the West that China has fared well during the global financial crisis and continued to advance in no small part due to their brain and man power, as well as sheer determination.

             Nevertheless, the civil servants were all very nice to us, and explained that they'd had a really hectic schedule, and that it was only decided that Cameron would visit China on Friday. We were very grateful for their help and duly made our way through the security, which was just like everywhere else in China - step through the metal detector, get wanded, make every instrument bleep, but actually not have to do anything about it. I joked to YZ that this is because so many people hate him in the UK, maybe they have to be careful, at which point, he joked that when I get through, I should throw my shoe at him. As tempting as that was, since I think a large number of things he has done are either wrong or amoral, I liked my winter boots better, and I didn't want to ruin the staging of one of his policies that I actually agree with. All joking aside, I felt very lucky to be in China and have this experience, so there was no way I would do anything to rock the boat (could you imagine the headlines?!). Also, regardless, I was curious to see what a Q & A with the prime minister would be like, and I certainly doubt whether he would ever be turning up on my doorstep again.

             So in we went, and since we were the last to arrive, we only got in at the back, but now that we were given official entry, the staff decided to be nice to us, and even got us chairs. But since we were so far away, my quality of my pictures were fairly poor:

Soo far away, right at the back, which allowed us to take photos from our phones which were supposed to be banned! 

           After a short speech by the head of Jiao Tong University, Cameron also chatted for a while about how glad he was to be here, etc. before starting on the questions from the audience. Each question seemed to be very considered and varied and also very well delivered in English by the students, which lead us to believe that probably all questions were vetted before hand, and maybe even passed on to Cameron, so that he (or his speech-writing team) could prepare answers to them. There were a few surprisingly controversial questions such as "We have heard that you faced some difficulties at the start of your time as Prime Minister..." but which the session developed with a more generic question later, such as "...what were the three biggest challenges you faced", to which of course, he said the deficit as number one (although he managed to avoid saying that this was a "legacy that Labour left us with" thank goodness), and the second was that he had to forge a coalition, for the first time in Britain for sixty years, which he pointedly mentioned was under Winston Churchill, as though he felt some similarity between the great man and himself! I was quite happy that somebody asked about the high-speed rail, which I have grown very much to love in China, as it is so convenient, but unlike how I'm sure it will be in the UK, it is very good value for money here, and cheaper than our regular trains back home. He answered this question with comments about how the British rail system is too old to be converted to high-speed rail, and that a new one has to be built to avoid disruptions to the existing line, but that this is difficult, because England is a smaller country, with a higher average population density than China, so it is more difficult to make use of the space there. It is true that on the bullet train in China, you can just see acres and acres of farm land for hundreds of kilometres, which must have made it easier to build the rail lines, but I have heard that some villagers were paid off by the government to move to new places if their homes got in the way of some construction work.

              However, he seemed slightly evasive about a question on visas, which I found confusing because I thought that was the purpose of his visit. A student had asked a question about how for Chinese citizens, it is possible to get a tourist visa that allows you to travel freely around all the European countries, except Britain. If they want to go to Britain, they have to get a separate, specific one, just for our country. He talked some waffle in response to this, trying to justify why it's worth going to the UK, but ultimately, his answer to this visa conundrum was "we're working on that".

             Slightly confusing, given the reason for his visit, but certainly Cameron was a "smooth talker", as a Bulgarian girl next to me observed. Even if he had pre-prepared all his answers, he acted them out very well, and was compelling to watch. For all his faults, you can see why he makes a good natural leader, in a way that someone like Ed Miliband does not (sorry Ed). I am glad I went, as it was interesting and educational, even if not in the way he intended. Even though I only heard about it an hour before he came, I wasn't about to let this opportunity slip by. We missed Boris by a cat's whisker (well, more like four days) during our trip to Beijing, so I was glad to be able to attend this. It seems so strange that I had to come to China to see the current UK prime minister, that the guys in the lab were starting to joke that maybe YZ and DB will meet the Xi Jinping, the Chinese President while they are in the UK!