The Queen began her conversation with Commander Lucy D’Orsi by quipping “oh, bad luck” when a palace official described how the officer had been assigned as Gold Commander for the state visit of Chinese premier Xi Jinping in October.
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The monarch made the comments to a police official at an event at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday to mark her recent 90th birthday.
Michel Hockx, director of SOAS China Institute, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show that some on Chinese social media believed the conversation was scripted – because the official introducing Ms D’Orsi to the Queen was reading from his notes. Extraordinary, ” the queen said.
Commander D’Orsi continued: “It was at the point they walked out of Lancaster House and told me that the trip was off, that I felt”.
“They were very rude to the ambassador”, the Queen is heard saying in the video referring to the first woman British Ambassador to China, Barbara Woodward. “It was very rude and undiplomatic I thought”, Ms. D’Orsi said.
Then, in a separate exchange at the palace that day, the queen is taped describing Chinese officials as “very rude”.
The Palace says it never comments on the Queen’s private conversations.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Xi’s visit to Britain a year ago had been “extremely successful” and both countries’ officials had made great efforts to that end.
The comments were recorded by a palace-authorized cameraman working for three British networks and distributed to broadcasters under a pool arrangement allowing them to use the material.
A senior Afghan official said Cameron’s remarks were unfair, the BBC reported.
She concluded: ‘Both leaders have been invited to the summit because they are driving the fight against corruption in their countries’.
LONDON (AP) Britain’s 90-year-old monarch has made a rare foray into political affairs, being caught on film characterizing Chinese officials as “very rude” in their dealings with British counterparts during a state visit last year.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Xi’s visit to Britain past year had been “extremely successful” and both countries’ officials had made great efforts to that end.
“I was involved in this and yes, at times it got a bit stressful on both sides”.
The Associated Press reports that Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, would not comment directly on the video, but emphasized that Xi’s trip to Britain was “very successful”.
“We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain”, Cameron told the monarch.
Afghanistan was ranked 166th out of 167 countries while Nigeria was ranked 136th in anti-corruption organization Transparency International’s 2015 corruption perception index.
Asked about Cameron’s comments, a spokesman for the Nigerian president earlier said: “This is embarrassing to us, to say the least, given the good work that the President is doing”.
Afghanistan’s Ashraf Ghani and Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari are due to attend the London summit and each has contributed an essay on his efforts to tackle graft. “What would I do with an apology?” he said.
“The prime minister must be looking at an old snapshot of Nigeria”, he said.
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“What would I do with an apology?” he said to cheers from many civil society organisations and Nigeria delegates in the audience.
