"Mr. Quo has mentioned some of the points of resemblance in the British and Chinese characters.
I think that we are attracted by a person for two reasons—frst for the qualities that we ourselves have and see in him—and secondly for the qualities he has and which we would like to have; and so we in England are attracted to China first by the things we have in common.
The Chinese have always been great traders and have acquired a reputation for honesty in their commercial dealings. It was a commonplace in the early days of our mutual intercourse that "a Chinaman's word was as good as his bond." It still is, The British likewise have always regarded their merchants as the backbone of the Empire and we also make it a matter of pride to keep our word and honour our bonds. We have been giving some rather big ones recently, but the events and decisions of the last few days show that they can be taken at face value.
And while we can never forget our indebtedness to you for having given us some hundreds of years ago our national drink—now in this year of grace you give us our baby here, a new star, the Giant Panda. Then we are attracted by things like your love of family life, your love of poetry, of nature and of fishing—and I think you have almost as many pictures in your museums of Chinese sages fishing in their boats, as we have of cur Prime Minister in our newspapers with his rod. of East Asia, and when China in the full exercise of her, national sover-eighty will not only be able to resume normal and friendly relations with her island neighbours on a basis of equality, but will set about restoring the country to the state of increasing prosperity it enjoyed before the outbreak of war; in fact to make it once again a land flowing with silk and money.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.