#APPALLING OLD WAXWORKS FULL#

A new play, King Charles III, which opens on Nov. Though Queen Elizabeth II has served longer than any other British monarch, she is nearly 90, so Prince Charles has begun to take on a larger share of royal responsibilities. The points that Prince Charles makes are only going to become more important. But I do think he is making something of a point.” “He hasn’t absented himself from it all, so it’s not as though he is completely snubbing the Chinese leader. “He is very sympathetic to the Tibetans and I think he has reservations about the Chinese leaders,” says Roderic Wye, a fellow in the Asia program at Chatham House, an international affairs institute in London. (After British Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in 2012, China canceled diplomatic meetings between the two countries and British newspapers reported that Cameron had been effectively “banned” from the country.) The Prince’s office at Clarence House wouldn’t comment on his absence from the banquet, but noted his “significant involvement” in the state visit in an official statement. In preparation for the visit, according reports from the BBC, Charles chose not to see the Dalai Lama when he visited the U.K.

#APPALLING OLD WAXWORKS FULL#

Though he isn’t attending the banquet, he and his wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall, will keep a full schedule of activities with the Chinese President, including hosting Xi and his wife for tea at his home. His feelings toward the Chinese have not been subtle - in a journal entry made after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Beijing, the Prince described China’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks.”īut this time, it seems that the Prince’s attitude toward working with the Chinese has changed. He didn’t attend the state banquet during former Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit in 2005 and he boycotted the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, citing his support for Tibet. Over the years, Prince Charles has been notably absent from events with the Chinese. His absence has renewed questions about the Prince’s rocky past with China.

Appalling old waxworks