A Buckingham Palace aide said that if the British government proposes that King Charles III visit China, the king will "consider it carefully".
The aide made the remarks to a group of media reporters as King Charles concluded a multi-country tour of the Caribbean and attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) over the weekend.
Not long before the relevant remarks were made, it was the 40th anniversary of the late Queen Elizabeth II's visit to China in 1986. She is the only British monarch to have ever visited China.
The British government has not yet commented on this statement. A committee of the House of Commons issued a report last week criticizing the current government for "walking along" in its China policy. Bayend has not yet clarified his position on Britain-China relations since he took office as Prime Minister.
During his just-concluded trip to the Caribbean, King Charles visited Guyana and the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda. The three countries are all members of the Commonwealth of Nations. The Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda are also Commonwealth kingdoms, with King Charles as their head of state.
The British Press Association reported that the Buckingham Palace aide was talking about China when commenting on the king's trip. "If the government said, 'Can the king go to China?' I think we would consider it very carefully," the "senior aide" told reporters traveling with him.
King Charles, 78, is still undergoing cancer treatment. During his official visit to the United States in April this year, his interaction with US President Trump was praised by the outside world.
Affected by the situation in Hong Kong, British criticism of China's human rights record, a series of espionage accusations, and the dispute over the construction of the new Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom, relations between London and Beijing have continued to be at a low ebb in recent years.
Agence France-Presse asked the Prime Minister's Office at No. 10 Downing Street whether the Bayend government would request the king to visit China. Its spokesman responded that where the monarch would visit "is determined by Buckingham Palace." However, whether the king receives foreign heads of state visiting the UK is actually decided "based on the advice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." In the same way, invitations to the king to visit other countries are also handled by the British Foreign Office.
During his trip to Antigua and Barbuda to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the King described the transatlantic slave trade as a "shameful chapter in history" that he felt "extremely sad" in his opening speech. Prime Minister Benedict also revealed that he was willing to consider a formal apology from the UK.
Agence France-Presse quoted the aide as saying: "I think we are seeing a very clear pattern emerging: the government is asking the king to intervene in some politically charged and challenging situations." The British Press Association quoted the senior Buckingham Palace aide as saying: "China is such an important country, it is a very complex country, and there are many complex factors to deal with when planning a visit."
The visit of the late Queen Elizabeth II in 1986 was the only official visit to China by a reigning British monarch so far. The Queen arrived in Beijing on October 12 of that year and met with Chinese President Li Xiannian, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Zhao Ziyang, and Director of the CPC Central Committee Advisory Committee Deng Xiaoping. The itinerary extended from Beijing to Shanghai and Guangzhou and lasted seven days. After the Queen concluded her visit to China, she immediately visited the then British Hong Kong for two days. The state visit took place 10 months after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, which finalized the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China in 1997.
King Charles has never visited China. When then Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the UK in 1999, and when current Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the UK in 2015, the then Crown Prince Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, did not attend the welcoming state banquet. Former Buckingham Palace aide Mark Bolland once described that Prince Charles "deliberately snubbed" China in 1999 because he did not recognize the Chinese Communist regime. Boland explained that this is because Prince Charles is a loyal supporter of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and believes that the Dalai Lama is being suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party. When Xi Jinping visited China in 2015, Prince Charles met with him separately.
