Mike Cormack

Anglo-Chinese misunderstanding: an Oxford don visits 1960s Beijing

Though promised free access and movement, Hugh Trevor-Roper was heavily monitored during his stay, leading to much indignation in his journal

issue 29 February 2020
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  • The China Journals: Ideology and Intrigue in the 1960s

    Hugh Trevor-Roper, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines

    Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 296, £25

This book is a rather startling depiction of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s involvement with the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), his sponsored visit to China in October 1965 (just months before the Cultural Revolution got under way) and his efforts to find out who actually controlled and funded SACU.

Having been induced to be a sponsor of the society on legitimate grounds of interest in China and its history, Trevor-Roper was a last-minute addition to a delegation visiting Beijing and Xian. He was promised freedom of movement and access, though the reality turned out quite differently. The China Journals thus comprises four sections: Trevor-Roper’s diary of his three-week visit; his diary of his time in Oxford and London two months later, when he tries to get to the bottom of SACU; his suppressed Encounter article on the episode; and a diary of a later visit to Taiwan and Cambodia. This last is tangential to the purpose of the book, but presumably included for balance on Trevor-Roper’s feelings about China.

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