When John Major travelled to Beijing in 1991, the then British prime minister faced criticism as the first major western leader to visit after the Tiananmen Square massacre two years earlier had made China an international pariah. His host was Li Peng, the notorious premier known as the “Butcher of Beijing”.



But during his three-day stay, Major made no bones about raising unwelcome political topics, publicly challenging Beijing over religious freedom, freedom of speech, an uprising in Tibet, the detention of student demonstrators and the massacre. “The world has not forgotten the events of June 1989,” Major told a press conference at which he took 17 questions – nine of them about human rights or the fight for democracy.

Theresa May’s visit this week comes during what some call China’s worst human rights crisis since Tiananmen.

China commends Theresa May for 'sidestepping' human rights Read more

Yet addressing reporters alongside the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, on Wednesday, May did not raise the issue. In fact, it fell to Li to make the only mention of the topic; discussed, he said, as part of a wider conversation about issues such as intellectual property rights and China-UK trade.



In accordance with Chinese demands, May and Li faced just two questions, one of them a softball from China’s Communist party-controlled media.

On Friday Chinese state media commended May’s wisdom in “sidestepping” calls to publicly upbraid Beijing. “The losses outweigh the gains if she appeases the British media at the cost of the visit’s friendly atmosphere,” the party-run Global Times said.



“Why would you start lecturing somebody you want to trade with?” a commentator on the Chinese state broadcaster CGTN said, explaining May’s posture. “Especially somebody in as tenuous a position such as her!”

A look back at some of the questions and now unthinkable answers from Major’s press conference underlines just how wary Britain and the world has become of publicly questioning an ascendant and ever more assertive Beijing.

John Major’s statement

“My talks today with Chinese leaders have shown that although we do not share common values, we do have shared interests ... Specifically in our discussions I raised the situation in Tibet, I raised the treatment of religious believers in Tibet and elsewhere and I raised the detention of people in China for exercising the freedom of expression, predominantly student demonstrators. I also raised the cases of four detainees from Hong Kong. In our exchanges I made it clear that we will continue to pursue all these matters vigorously in the future.

“I also raised with the Chinese leadership a number of individual cases which Amnesty International had particularly asked me to take up. These included members of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and five employees of a car factory, one of whom is reported to have been sentenced to 20 years in prison, the heaviest sentence known to have been imposed since June 1989. I asked Premier Li Peng to take a personal interest in all these cases.”

Q: As the leader of one of the western world’s oldest democracies, is there any advice or words of wisdom you could offer to democracy supporters and activists in China at present?

A: The world is changing, we have seen that in the most dramatic way over the last two or three years and perhaps most especially over the last two or three weeks. There is a movement across the world for democracy and economic and political freedoms, that, like the world’s concern over human rights, is a movement that is not going to go away. Each country must find its own route in order to enshrine that democracy and to enshrine that freedom of expression and those economic and political freedoms. It is not for me to determine what the right way ahead is in China, but that there must be a way ahead I think is beyond doubt and that was clear from our discussions today that that is my opinion.

Q: On the question of human rights, you said that yourself, your foreign minister, your ambassador in Peking, will be pressing for answers from the Chinese government. If you don’t get the answers you want, what action are you prepared to take?

A: I think you have to go back to what has happened on other occasions elsewhere in other parts of the world. Continually, people are pressed in other countries on the question of human rights and that pressure has yielded results as it continues and that is actually what we wish to see. We wish to see results, so it is the unrelenting, unremitting continuance of pressure that often yields results on human rights, so we will continue to press but don’t expect me to set out precisely the form of that. I am just going to make it clear to you that these are not matters that we will let drop, neither in my judgment will anybody else let them drop as well.

Q: Prime minister, you said your views on human rights were frank and forthright. How did Premier Li Peng respond? Was he angered or irritated?

A: I think that is a question for the premier and not really for me but he listened to the points carefully that I made; he made a careful note of them. I am handing this evening, via the ambassador, details of the cases I raised to the premier; he undertook that he would examine them. We must now wait and see what the result of that examination turns out to be.”

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In the almost three decades since Major risked Chinese ire with his plain-spoken answers, the world has indeed changed, although not, in China’s case, as he and many others had envisaged.



Fast-forward to 2018 and political freedom remains an alien concept to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens. Their country has, though, become an economic behemoth: the world’s second-biggest economy and its wealthiest and most powerful authoritarian state. Under Xi Jinping it has pushed for official recognition of its new status alongside the US as one of the world’s great powers, while Beijing’s low tolerance for foreign criticism has receded further.



Such a transformation means that, whatever they privately think, few western politicians or diplomats would today dare publicly repeat Major’s assertion that they shared interests with China’s Communist party leaders but not values.



Even if they were minded to do so, Beijing would give them short shrift. As the Global Times boasted in its endorsement of May’s compliance, foreign “noise and nagging will be carried away by the wind” in this brave “new era” of Chinese might.