INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Jeremy Hunt, Britain's new foreign minister made an awkward debut in China on Monday (AFP)Beijing: Britain's new foreign minister made an
awkward debut in China on Monday when he sought to curry favour with his hosts by mentioning his Chinese wife, but accidentally referred to
her as "Japanese".China and Japan have been traditional rivals for centuries
Although relations have improved somewhat recently, they remain touchy due to issues such as Japan's bloody occupation of parts of China in
the 1930s and 40s.Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, on his first official visit to China, quickly acknowledged the "terrible" error."My wife is
Japanese -- my wife is Chinese
That's a terrible mistake to make," he told his counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
"My wife is Chinese and my children are half-Chinese and so we have Chinese grandparents who live in Xian and strong family connections in
China," he added, referring to the ancient city of Xian in northern China.A former health minister, Hunt is married to Lucia Guo, with whom
he has three children.He succeeds the gaffe-prone Boris Johnson -- who once referred to Africans as "flag-waving piccaninnies" with
"watermelon smiles" in a newspaper column -- after Johnson dramatically resigned over Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit blueprint earlier
this month.Hunt is in China in a bid to strengthen trade ties with Beijing ahead of Britain's exit from the European Union next year.Other
topics on the table are expected to be "the importance of multilateralism and free trade and ways the UK and China can work together on
global challenges such as climate change, development, security and non-proliferation and enforcing UN sanctions on North Korea", his office
said ahead of the trip.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a
