Hunt makes ‘Japanese wife’ gaffe in China

Britain’s new foreign minister made an awkward debut in China yesterday 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 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.Hunt yesterday said he welcomed China’s offer of talks on a post-Brexit trade deal. “We discussed the offer made by Foreign Minister Wang to open discussion of a possible free-trade deal done between Britain and China, post-Brexit,” Hunt said at a joint press conference. “We welcome this and said that we will explore it.”Britain is assessing its post-Brexit trade options.London is already moving ahead with plans to negotiate a free-trade deal with the US as soon as it leaves the European Union, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said last week.