{"id":144390,"date":"2022-11-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=909620"},"modified":"2022-11-19T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-19T00:00:00","slug":"mike-bloomberg-apologises-to-guests-after-boris-johnson-criticises-china-during-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2022\/11\/19\/mike-bloomberg-apologises-to-guests-after-boris-johnson-criticises-china-during-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Bloomberg apologises to guests after Boris Johnson criticises China during speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

B illionaire financier Mike Bloomberg was forced to apologise to hundreds of guests at a business event in Singapore after Boris Johnson made a speech criticising China, reports have said.
\nThe former Prime Minister spoke at the Bloomberg New Economy Form in Singapore on Tuesday where he described China as \u201ca coercive autocracy\u201d during an after-dinner speech to approximately 500 Asian businesspeople, investors and diplomats.
\nMr Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and friend of Mr Johnson, acknowledged that some attendees may have been \u201cinsulted or offended\u201d by the remarks during a session on Wednesday.
\nAccording to The Guardian, the businessman later clarified that Mr Johnson\u2019s comments were \u201chis thoughts and his thoughts alone\u201d.
\n\u201cSome may have been insulted or offended last night by parts of the speaker\u2019s remarks referencing certain countries and their duly elected leaders.
\n\u201cThose were his thoughts and his thoughts alone, not cleared in advance by anyone nor shared with me personally,\u201d Mr Bloomberg said.
\n\u201cTo those of you who were upset and concerned by what the speaker said, you have my apologies.
\n\u201cAnd if you weren\u2019t upset, perhaps you\u2019ve enjoyed Boris Johnson - he is who he is. He\u2019s very controversial but also very entertaining. He was trying to be amusing rather than informative and serious and I think we need to give him a little bit of credit for that.\u201d
\nMr Johnson is also said to have told guests that he was taking a \u201ctemporary hiatus\u201d from frontline politics, fuelling speculation that he plans to make a comeback in future.
\nOne guest at the dinner said: \"Boris was pretty belligerent in his criticism of a bunch of foreign governments, especially China and Russia, which he described as coercive autocracies.\"
\nAnother attendee said: \"Boris was very, very critical. The speech was pretty shocking. People felt uncomfortable. He used very undiplomatic language about China at a conference in Asia. A former Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister should have known better.\"
\nA spokesperson for Mr Johnson said: \u201cThe Prime Minister is robust in his criticism of authoritarianism and autocracy \u2013 including in Russia and China \u2013 and will continue to be so. He will continue to make the case for freedom and democracy on the world stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

B illionaire financier Mike Bloomberg was forced to apologise to hundreds of guests at a business event in Singapore after Boris Johnson made a speech criticising China, reports have said.
\nThe former Prime Minister spoke at the Bloomberg New Economy F…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,586,785,194,249],"tags":[10338,10315,1859],"class_list":["post-144390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-economy","category-new-york","category-news-chinese-law","category-russia","tag-democracy","tag-media-intelligence","tag-singapore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144391,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144390\/revisions\/144391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}