An open letter to Former PM Paul Keating

Dear Mr. Keating,

I am writing this open letter to you and will ask a friend, John Lander, to bring it to your attention as I felt it was necessary to give you some degree of support. Former Ambassador Dennis Argall suggested I let you know that he trusts my advice and the advice of people I recommend in matters regarding China. Feel free to discuss my background with either of these gentlemen. I have also written several articles for John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations Policy Review and am sure he would endorse my words as being reliable.

I am not under any illusions that you would know who I am so I will provide a brief introduction here. My name is Jerry Grey, I am a British born Australian citizen who, for the last 18 years, has been a resident of Zhongshan City in Guangdong Province, China. I paid scant attention to anything political for most of my life but in 2020 I started, out of boredom, posting photographs and stories of my travels in China on Twitter. That decision turned my life around so much because I have found that, almost everything I say online which is based on my observations and experiences attracts the kind of criticism you have attracted with your recent Press Club Interviews. I must also add that, my online presence, like your presentation, attracts a great deal of support too.

I think I am unique in the foreign community in China as I have travelled to almost every province and region but that’s not what makes me unique. What makes me unique is that I have travelled by bicycle doing the hard yards, climbing hills, mountains and crossing deserts. I have ridden in excess of 30,000 kilometres by road in China and almost none of it on highways, all through small regional roads.

In doing so, my wife and I have raised significant sums of money for disabled people in our community and have become quite well-known inside of China. So much so that several TV documentaries have been made about us, most recently by CGTN Europe, linked here. But more importantly, we have seen progress at village, county and rural town levels that make what China has achieved in the last 20 years almost incomprehensible to anyone who has not witnessed the significant and hugely beneficial changes to rural China.

It is this experience that makes me both unique in the foreign community and an avid supporter of China as well as the governing Communist Party. While I would not for one second consider myself a communist or socialist, I have to concede, I have never seen a more collaborative and consultative method of governance, one that engages and benefits its constituents in ways that western democracy proponents would find unimaginable. When people ask: do I support the CPC? My answer is yes, at this period in history, I support everything I have seen them doing. I can not speak for the past, I will not speculate on the future but I will say, and stand by this fact, that China under Xi Jinping is a MUCH better place for 1.4 billion people than any other place I have lived or travelled to and is, in fact, a better place than it was when I arrived here in 2004.

I have been described in Western media as a retired security guard, a cyclist in China, a Beijing apologist and many other names but I speak only from experience and support that with research. My one main regret is that, the two times I travelled across Xinjiang by bike, I was not interested in the politics and didn’t make the kind of videos or take the types of pictures I should have in order to refute the narrative that you so succinctly stated was “disputed”. Indeed, I am one of the disputers.

In 2014, it was not my first trip to the region but it was the first time I travelled in Xinjiang by bike, cycling across the regional border from Gansu through a place called Xin Xin Xia (starry gorge) and travelled approximately 1500 kilometres to the border with Kazakhstan at Khorgas. Once we arrived at Khorgas, we dismantled the bikes, hired drivers and cars and visited several different areas inside Xinjiang including grasslands and snowy mountain (Tian Shan) regions. During that trip, we saw no evidence of oppression, we met, mingled with and interacted daily with Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Mongols, Tajiks and Kyrgyz who were living normal lives.

In 2019, my wife and I flew to Urumqi and had our bikes shipped there, we assembled the bikes and started to ride out of the Region through a different route crossing the Taklamakan desert, through the Tarim Basin. This is not mean to be a geography lesson, this is only to demonstrate that in almost 5000 kilometres of travel inside Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, I’ve seen no evidence of oppression, persecution and absolutely nothing like a genocide going on. In fact, quite the opposite.

I’m not so naïve to suggest there haven’t been some problems, clearly there have, there is an enhanced security in the region, checkpoints are regular but the police are polite and, in most cases kind and helpful. They provide clean water, gave us fruit and were curious as to the nature of our journey — I should add that my wife is Han Chinese and got no special attention. I, as a foreigner, might have but the main point is that, at these checkpoints, we witnessed hundreds of people passing through automatically by scanning their cards and being recognised in the system. The police were obliged to manually input my data as their automated systems of card and facial recognition do not have foreign passports registered. Once again, it’s an observation I can make that I’ve seen many thousands of Xinjiang residents, including Uyghurs using this system and seen no evidence of abuse, no oppression and, when asked about these measures, every person replies with the same answer: it’s safer than it used to be, so it’s ok.

Personally, I don’t like it, I am a westerner and find this kind of imposition to be intrusive but, to the local Chinese, it’s a daily part of their lives and they see no issue with it at all. Here is where things break down in misunderstandings. We impose our sense of individualism onto a society that has a sense of communalism and we see things differently to them. We are bothered by it, they are not but organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US State Department and many others feel it is ok to impose our western values and ideals on a society with differing expectations. Always without having any feedback from the local community. Not one of the above-mentioned organisations has ever visited Xinjiang and asked the people there what they feel about the security measures; I have.

There hasn’t been a terrorist incident in the region, or in China at all for that matter, since these checks were imposed and this is a matter of great pride, not just for the Chinese government, but for the people who communally work together to make this happen. This is not something the Chinese people need “rescuing from”.

Some people call me naïve, I’ve been accused in mainstream media of looking at China through rose tinted glasses and, to some extent that’s true. However, I am not, as I’ve been described, a “retired security guard who rides a bike”. I was a General Manager for Chubb Security and, during my career, have taken security systems, access control, CCTV and perimeter protections to many of the buildings you, as PM, will have been into, including your own residence, The Lodge. At some stage of my career, I have entered almost every prison in the UK and Queensland, Australia, so I know what a prison looks like and I certainly know what oppression looks like.

I was, for 10 years, a British police officer, working the first 5 years in Central London and a further five years just outside Greater London in Essex. I was on the front lines of the Brixton and Toxteth Riots, I was at Lewisham during the National Front Campaigns and one of the first officers in Mainland Britain to be deployed with a riot shield. I was front and centre when the Miner’s Strike hit the UK, spending many weeks in the coal fields of Northern and Northwest England. During that time, I discovered very much what police brutality and oppression look like.

I have also attended the scenes of IRA bombs and am VERY aware of the consequences of terrorism; images still haunt my dreams from time to time. I was considered loyal and smart enough to have been given the privilege of guarding Lady Diana Spencer and the Prince of Wales as part of the Royalty Protection Group before they were married and I was a member of the Diplomatic Protection Group prior to that. Clearly, this background gives me an insight that is more observational than that of a normal tourist in any region.

I notice things, it’s a part of my DNA and, if I didn’t notice oppression and persecution in Xinjiang, it’s because there isn’t any. Almost everything negative that I have read about Xinjiang can be reasonably explained for. For example; the satellite imagery identified by ASPI’s Nathan Ruser, a 20 something ungraduated university student at the time he started to identify buildings as prisons are simply what China says they are — schools and factories. The reason he misidentifies them is because he’s never set foot in China nor seen the way a school or factory is constructed — because of huge distances involved, there are dormitories, these are identified by ASPI as cells. Because of the issues of security in a country which, until recently was wracked with poverty, there are security walls, fences, manned gates and barbed wire, there are also, on almost every building in China, grills or bars on the windows, my own apartment has these, installed before I bought it.

Chinese school students wear uniforms, Chinese factory employees too, ASPI not only misinterprets but then confirms these misinterpretations as prisons because of bias, staff are seen moving from one place to another wearing uniforms therefore a biased mind interprets a prison, a knowledgeable, informed or experienced minds know it’s not.

Every school, even kindergartens, in China has two uniformed police officers outside the gate as kids go in and when they come out, this is because a few years ago, you might recall, there was an incident of a knife wielding madman entering a school and killing several kids as well as a teacher. This will probably never happen again in China due to these measures. Seeing the police officers at the gate is not considered authoritarian by the kids, they love to salute and shake hands with, or at least say hi to the officers.

I have personally interacted with ASPI’s Ruser and told him this, so it is no longer a misinterpretation, it is now either an outright lie, or an indication that ASPI are too biased to research the truth and correct his error.

ASPI have also taken the work of junior interns such as Alex Joske who was a 20 year old intern when he wrote a report called “Picking flowers and making honey” in which his level of expertise was such that the entire product of his research could be pulled apart as being nothing more than hyperbole (which I did here) but which has caused Australia, the USA and the UK, without any real evidence of wrongdoing by China, to revise their policy of allowing Chinese students with military backgrounds to study. Perhaps one of the most short-sighted and Sinophobic policies imaginable.

In short, ASPI are wrong on Xinjiang, they are wrong on military students, they are wrong on their reasoning for China’s military build-up and they are wrong about China’s perceived “aggression”. What they are right about is how well to manipulate the media to create the conditions to improve their sponsors chances gaining a foothold in the Australian market for weapons that Australia doesn’t need.

I notice ASPI are distancing themselves from the recent media “Red Alert Series”. Even the Australian Guardian needed to retract one paragraph which suggested ASPI were involved but this series most assuredly perpetuates their own narrative. Peter Jennings, described in the series as a “former defence official”, you obviously know, is the former Executive Director, and, according to their website, still a senior fellow of ASPI, several of the other members of the panel are apart of ASPI. Here’s Lavina Lee’s ASPI bio, here’s a link to one of Mick Ryan’s contributions to ASPI; here’s a link to Lesley Seeback’s book contributions to ASPI.

In fact, the only person, on the panel of five, not directly connected to ASPI is Professor Alan Finkel and what his expertise in relation to China might be, is anyone’s guess. He has, as far as I can ascertain never held or expressed any opinions whatsoever on China, l can not find a reference to any working knowledge of China’s military buildup, China’s governance, the Communist Party or even the psychology or national identity of China in his background. His presence does not bring any level of balance to the discussion.

As I reach the end of this letter, I can assure you there is a lot more information on China which is far more on the positive balance than the negative. To paraphrase Samuel Clemens: Claims of China’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

China has built all kinds of infrastructure, hospitals, schools universities and vocational colleges. It has more bridges, roads and ports than any other country, it has more high-speed rail and more frequent slow speed trains than any other country.

I can vouch for the fact that 5G is available in almost every part of China, something no other country I’m aware of can boast. I recently travelled through poverty alleviations programs in Yunnan, Hunan, Sichuan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region without having a single issue on connectivity. Huawei is just about to release a 5.5G and already working on a viable 6G.

China has 1.4 billion people, which includes 56 ethnicities and has lifted half of them out of abject poverty in the last 40 years.

China has over 200 languages still alive and active inside the country and, while there is one language for the nation, each of these ethnicities and many regional communities, use their own language in their day to day lives. Announcements in public places, road signs and many other indicators, including China’s currency display clear evidence of this.

China has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world during our lifetimes and now has a 60% attendance in tertiary education a 99+% literacy rate. Imagine, just a generation into the future, China will have produced over half a billion tertiary education graduates.

China has a life expectancy on a par with the developed world and now, far in excess of the United States.

China has written off many debts to third world countries, provided millions more vaccines, PPE’s and sent medical teams to more countries than any other to help overcome the recent pandemic.

China is not only virtually crime free, but is one of the safest places in the world to live, bring up kids and enjoy a lifestyle that is second to none. It’s hardly surprising that a recent poll of 32 countries found China at the top of the world in ranking global happiness.

In short, everything you said about China was true, everything your detractors have said about you and China can be proven to be untrue. The same as every fact stated here is verifiable.

Your detractors, and mine, may very well disagree with our statements but not one person can prove any of this is wrong, they can only offer opinions that your knowledge or my experience might be different. They can state that you, or I, could have been misled or, as is most common, that we are paid for our opinions and therefore they are not worth considering; little realising that the very journalists who express this sentiment are in fact actually paid for their opinions and forced to stick to their publisher’s narrative. My answer to them, apart from the fact that I am not paid is simple: even if I were paid, can you point to any fact which is in dispute and for which you think I am being paid to misinform you? Inevitably, that is the end of the discussion.

It matters not who is paid for what story, what matters is, does the person telling it have the experience, the knowledge and the supporting information to prove that it’s true? If not, they are probably selling propaganda, if they do, then, whether or not we like the message, the message is true and acceptance is inevitable unless we are either too stupid to realise it, or too biased to accept it.

This is where we stand on China now: many “experts” do not have the experience or knowledge of modern China to speak with authority, most journalists have never been to China, or in the case of some, have been but lived their entire career inside and “ex-pat bubble” and have not experienced the kind of China that they need to experience to form legitimate opinions.

One final point, some academics who do speak out, such as you have done, are pilloried in the media by people who have less knowledge, less experience and are less ethical than those people who stand up.

I applaud your courage; I applaud your knowledge and I applaud your ability to have your voice heard on a global platform. You speak words of truth that people (in some circles) don’t want to hear but I have been enthused and motivated by the responses on platforms such as Twitter when a journalist criticises you for your message that journalist is inundated with responses supporting you and ridiculing them.

I honestly think your recent Press Club Interview will go down in history as a turning point in the narrative on China. People who are “paid to be anti-China” will not change but a huge number of Australians have stepped up to support you and assure our government that we do not want, need or will gain any benefit from disputes and should avoid, at all costs any thought of war with China. And for that, I thank you.