Roundtable Discussion with Peter Wilson

The National Committee hosted an informative discussion with Peter Wilson, political counsellor at the British Embassy in Beijing, on March 4, 2009, in New York. In his introductory comments and the roundtable discussion that followed, Mr. Wilson addressed issues of U.K.-China relations, focusing on The UK and China: A Framework for Engagement, which was recently released by the U.K. Foreign & Commonwealth Office (The document is available in PDF format on this page, and on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office web site: http://ukinchina.fco.gov.uk/en/working-with-china/uk-and-china). Mr. Wilson also addressed issues of E.U.-China relations and U.S.-China relations in the context of global issues including the economic crisis, climate change and trade.

Peter Wilson has been political counsellor at the British Embassy in Beijing since January 2008, and was political counsellor in Islamabad for two years before that. He has been a policy planner in London, worked on EU issues in Brussels, and was on Lord Brittan’s staff of the European Commission working on China’s entry to the WTO in 1999. He has a Master’s in Public Administration from the Kennedy School, a BA in Modern History from Oxford, and studied Mandarin in London and Beijing. He grew up in London and Hong Kong, where his father, David Wilson, served as Governor of Hong Kong from 1987 to 1992.