During President Xi’s visit to America last year, China’s leader attempted to win over his American audience with a joke about House of Cards. Referring to the American show which sees Frank Underwood use dirty tricks to get to the top, he said his crackdown on corruption was not aimed at purging political rivals — that this is no ‘House of Cards‘.
Unfortunately he had no such gags prepared for his UK state visit in October. In fact, if anything his House of Cards knowledge — or lack there of — proved problematic. Writing in the new issue of The Spectator, Lord Dobbs — the author of the original novel on which the Netflix series is based — recalls his encounter with President Xi:
‘A little while ago during his official visit to Britain I was invited to meet President Xi of China. In order to mark the occasion I decided to give him an original and now rather rare hardback copy of the book. He looked at it perplexed. ‘What,’ he said, ‘you have House of Cards in this country, too?’
While Dobbs put his book’s global success down in part to ‘the limitless skills of Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright’, Mr S hopes that President XI does find time to read the original book. After all, there must be some things about power and corruption he is yet to learn.
The full diary can be read here.
Comments