Chinese Diplomats Seeking Political Asylum

Watch this space for a sequel to the ham recipe that makes use of leftovers from that ham dinner.

Anyway, in the meantime, let's compare two separate cases of Chinese diplomats seeking political asylum - one in the 60s, and one recently.

In 1963, Chinese diplomat Zhou Hungjing went to the Soviet embassy in Tokyo and asked for political asylum. He expressed interest in several options, including defecting to Taiwan. But in the end, Japanese authorities decided to send him back to China.

Just last year, another Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin who was in charge of political affairs at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney sought political asylum in Australia. Despite the initial refusal to grant him political asylum status, Chen and his family were later granted permanent protection visa by the Australian Immigration Department,

Of course the two cases are very different and I am just drawing simple conclusions here.

It seems to me that 1) even when China was not as much a rising power as it is now, countries still saw the need to "give in" to China, and 2) western countries (sorry Australia, you aren't really Asian, are you?) are more inclined to take up and support cases involving the violation of human rights as Chen reportedly feared for his safety if he were to return to China.