AsiaPundit has always hoped that Queen Elizabeth II has a long reign. I’m not a fan of the monarchy, but I am a Canadian and would dread having Prince Charles on the currency when he assumes his role as head of state. I expect the Chinese leadership aren’t looking forward to that day either.:

Bureaucratic, corrupt, and in possession of an overactive superiority complex’. In so many words, that was how Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, is reportedly to have described Mainland China, in a personal journal titled “The Handover of Hong Kong -`The Great Chinese Takeaway’”. Sections of which were published earlier this month in the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday edition of one of the world’s leading English language newspapers. Much to the distress of face conscious China.

In the journal, written by the Prince as a chronicle of his experiences and opinions during the 1997 hand-over of Hong Kong, form British control to Mainland Chinese rule, and obtained by the Mail on Sunday through undisclosed means, Prince Charles describes Chinese officials as being “appalling old waxworks” and the hand-over ceremony as being an "awful Soviet-style display" where the Chinese military ‘goose stepped’ around in a ‘ridiculous’ ceremony before turning on an artificial wind generator to make sure that the newly raised Chinese flag could be seen to ‘flutter enticingly’.

The journal, which was never intended for public consumption, then goes on to describe then Chinese President Jiang Xemin taking the podium and making an undisguised ‘propaganda’ speech to a crowd of loyalists, who had been gathered together by Beijing especially for the occasion in order to give the impression that the speech was well received by the masses.

Things haven’t improved much since the handover and passing of the Jiang era, ACB notes that Charles hasn’t taken a liking to Hu Jintao.:

The publication of the Prince’s acidic comments on China come at a particularly delicate time in relations between the British Imperial family and the Chinese State. Emerging, as they did, in near tandem with the circulation of rumors that Prince Charles purposefully arranged his travel plans so as to make himself unavailable for an official banquet with Hu Jintao, in effect arranging a boycott of the event, during President Hu’s recent visit to London.

Officially, Prince Charles was ‘recovering from jet lag’ during Hu’s visit. Unofficially, however he is said to have refused to attend as in protest against Beijing’s human rights record.

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