Posted on 11/08/2007 4:13:35 PM PST by blam
Anger at Tony Blair's 'boring' £200,000 speech
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 7:10pm GMT 08/11/2007
Tony Blair has come under fire in the Chinese media for charging nearly £200,000 for a single speech – and not a good one at that.
The former prime minister spoke to businessmen and government officials in the industrial city of Dongguan, two hours' north of Hong Kong, on Tuesday evening.
Reports said the speech lacked substance
Local media estimates of his fee ranged from US$330,000 to US$500,000 (£160,000 to £240,000).
Although the real estate firm which hired him for a “VIP banquet” refused to confirm the sum, the local tax office admitted he had paid just under £80,000 in income tax and £6,500 for a three per cent business tax, which would work out to a total fee of about just under £200,000.
What made matters worse for newspaper commentators was that Mr Blair failed to say anything interesting.
One said he had trotted out the same platitudes about the importance of collaboration between government and business, and of the environment, as you would hear from the officials in his audience.
"Frankly, we are very familiar with all this – it's just like listening to any county or city official's reports,” Deng Qingbo wrote in the China Youth Daily.
"If so, why pay such a high price to hear the same thing? Is it worth the money? Do these thoughts multiply in value because they come from the mouth of a retired prime minister?”
Dongguan is a city of 1.7 million permanent residents and 10 million migrant labourers, mostly living eight or more to a room in the workers' dormitories that are attached to the industrial estates dotting its grimy suburbs.
Typical shop-floor wages range from £40 to £100 per month.
Mr Blair arrived from Hong Kong after a lunch with Merrill Lynch and a dinner with the Chamber of Commerce the night before.
He was whisked to the city with a police escort, and on arrival was presented with a gold magnolia, the town's symbol, by its Communist Party secretary, Liu Zhigeng.
He was then presented with a Chinese scroll by his hosts, Guangdong Guangda Group, a local real estate company. Mr Blair's audience comprised 600 local businessmen and officials, and 100 clients of the property firm who had put down deposits of more than a million yuan (£65,000).
In a speech whose Chinese title translates as “From Greatness to Brilliance”, he described his personal connections with the country - his sister-in-law is Chinese, while he revealed that his seven-year-old son Leo was studying Mandarin at school.
"China is a very special country, and has a special place in the heart of my family,” he said.
He went on to say that he had visited Dongguan in the 1980s.
“The reason I am in Dongguan now is because I was told that everything that was happening here was amazing.
"But Dongguan also faces the issue of how to take the next step. I want to say, if you keep a forward-looking attitude and keep an eye on what lies ahead, Dongguan's future is immeasurable.”
China Youth Daily, which is published by the Communist Youth League but is one of the country's more progressive papers, said the speech was full of pleasantries and cliches but did not provide any new insights.
It said China should exercise more discernment.
“Is the country to become a market where international celebrities come digging for gold?” it said.
"We should exercise less ostentation and vanity. We need more genuinely fresh knowledge - especially when we are spending the tax-payers' pennies.”
Mr Blair's tour was arranged by Washington Speakers Bureau, a firm which also has Mr Blair's predecessor, Sir John Major, and President George W. Bush's brother, Jeb, on its books.
A tour it arranged for Mr Blair in the United States last month netted him £300,000, according to one report.
After Dongguan, Mr Blair flew on to Beijing, where in his role as Middle East envoy he met Tang Jiaxuan, a state councillor with special responsibility for foreign affairs, and then spoke to the Business Week Global Chief Executive Officers' Forum at the China World Hotel.
The British Embassy said it had no involvement in his trip other than to liaise over security.
A spokeswoman for Washington Speakers Bureau travelling with him referred calls to her chief executive in Washington.
How does it feel to get ripped off? You didn’t get what you paid for? Tough @#$%!
At least Tony’s speech won’t kill any children.
Funny, they had no problem paying Bill Clinton $150,000 back in 2002 for a 30 minute speech in southern China.
uhm, not to point out the obvious, but- China kinda kills their own kids. However- they do cherish cash and of course the lives of their men in uniform who gas and beat students......
Anger is the Chinese national persona.
“Funny, they had no problem paying Bill Clinton $150,000 back in 2002 for a 30 minute speech in southern China.”
I was just thinking the same thing.
This was all a set up. Blair is critical of Brown's posture in Iraq and on Iran, China is still smarting over Iraq and the loss of its oil options there when Sadaam's government fell. Iran is a resource based trading partner with China, and Blair has been publicly critical of Browns policies, swaying public opinion against the new moonbat British government, which, BTW, the Red Chinese love.
So the Chinese invite Blair to speak, attracting him with a luscious fee. Blair goes not realizing he has been hired as a walking Press Snipers target ( The government CONTROLS the press in China, telling editors what the story lines are to be, and they told the press , " Get Blair!")
So Blair journeys home richer, but with less and less political credibility. "He has lost his edge, he is not what he used to be, he should go into seclusion and write his memoirs, etc.....," in the British Liberal press, result? No one pays attention anymore to Tony's public musings on the British governments defeatist policy in Iraq and with Irans nuclear plans.
Great Move China, you shut Tony Blair up! Now no one will listen to him at home(sarc.) But you know, the Nazis tried some of the same strategies with WInston Churchill, and it only made that Bulldog worse! It will be the same with Tony Blair. You Red Chinoise just royally pissed off Tony Blair, wrong move!
The Red Chinese do not Understand gravitas when it comes to British politicians. Tony is on the right side of history and he has proven it over and over with his Iraq and Iran policy when he was PM.
Brits will never forget him in their dark days to come.
Thusly does Red China meddle in the internal politics of Britain.
The Chinese press is just doing its usual racialistic/nationalistic thing - its default position is that payments handed out to dirty foreigners constitute theft. Everyone knows that these junkets are staged so that local bigwigs can have their photos taken with a bona fide VIP and bask in reflected glory, not so that they can hear him pontificate on world peace or some other wild and woolly subject.
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