Peter Elliott
B.Arch in Architecture (college major), Victoria University of Wellington - Architecture and Design (Graduated 1997)2y
Why do European and USA old people, who have never been to China, say so many bad things about China?
My Mum (that’s how we spell it in New Zealand ok) had a really good friend, her best friend really, who went over to China 35 years ago as a missionary. She spent something like 15 years there trying to convert the heathens, is how Mum put it. Eventually she was arrested for crossing some line, detained for a few months and then sent back to New Zealand.

My Mother, to this day, sees China as a heathen place that arrests people for no reason and praises the lord every day that they didn’t string her best friend up or harvest her organs or something. This was the general mood of the day back when the fear of Communists was in full swing and my Mother was taught to hate them. I think religion did play a part in this biased view.

I lived over there for 4 years, married a Chinese girl and have learned not to get political about China in her presence. She’s fine with looking at modern city photos and hugging my wife, but will always see China as a brutal authoritarian regime.

People don’t generally change their world view in midstream, so old people tend to be just like my Mum. They, like she, were young and impressionable in that crucial post war period and that’s cemented in their brains now.