The Economist examines why a successful, well-established community remains so invisible in British public and political life
The Economist tackled a question that Alex has spent much of his public life trying to answer through action: why does Britain’s Chinese community — educated, economically successful and long established — remain so underrepresented in politics, media and public institutions? The piece examined the cultural, historical and structural reasons behind that absence, from a tendency to avoid confrontation to institutional barriers that go unexamined. As one of the very few British-Chinese elected politicians in England, Alex’s very presence in the council chamber is a quiet challenge to the pattern the Economist describes. His view is simple: that absence has a cost, and someone has to show it can be different.
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