Alan Donald

Sir Alan Ewen Donald KCMG (5 May 1931 – 14 July 2018)[2] was a British diplomat who was the United Kingdom ambassador to Indonesia and China.

Sir Alan Donald KCMG LLD
British Ambassador to China
In office 26 May 1988 – 1991
Monarch	Elizabeth II
President	Yang Shangkun
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher John Major
Preceded by	Sir Richard Evans
Succeeded by	Sir Robin McLaren
British Ambassador to Indonesia
In office 1984–1988
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Margaret Thatcher
Preceded by	Robert Brash
Succeeded by	William White
Personal details
Born	5 May 1931 Inverurie, Scotland
Died	14 July 2018 (aged 87) Kent, England
Nationality	British
Spouse(s)	Janet H. T. Blood ​ (m. 1958)​ [1]
Children	4[1]
Education	Fettes College
Alma mater	Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Occupation	Diplomat

Early life and education

Donald was born on 5 May 1931 in Inverurie, Scotland to Robert T. Donald and Louise Turner.[1] He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, Fettes College, then Trinity Hall, Cambridge (BA, LLM).

Career, 1949-2008

• National Service with Royal Horse Artillery 1949–50.
• Joined HM Foreign Service 1954: Third Secretary, Peking, 1955–57.
• Foreign Office (FO), 1958–61: Private Secretary to Parliamentary Under-Secretary, FO, 1959–61.
• Second, later First Secretary, UK Delegation to NATO, Paris, 1961–64.
• First Secretary, Peking, 1964–66.
• Personnel Dept, Diplomatic Service Admin Office, later FCO, 1967–71.
• Counsellor (Commercial), Athens, 1971–73.
• Political Adviser to Governor of Hong Kong, 1974–77.
• Ambassador to Republics of Zaire, Congo Brazzaville, Burundi and Rwanda, 1977–80.[3][4][5]
• Assistant Under-Secretary of State (Asia and the Pacific), FCO, 1980–84.
• Ambassador to Republic of Indonesia, 1984–88.
• Ambassador to People’s Republic of China, 1988–91.
• Director: China Fund Inc. (NY), 1992–2003; HSBC China Fund Ltd, 1994–2004; J.P. Morgan Fleming Asian Investment Trust Ltd, 1997–2001 (Fleming Far Eastern Investment Trust, 1991–97).
• President, China Association, 2003–08.

Role in UK-China Relations

Donald began his studies of the Chinese language at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).[6] Soon after joining the Foreign Office (FO) in 1954, Alan Donald served as Third Secretary in Peking (Beijing) from 1955-1957, watching as the People's Republic of China responded to the posthumous dethroning of Stalin by Khrushchev, uprisings in Eastern Europe, the Hundred Flowers Campaign, and the Anti-Rightist Campaign.

After a series of posts in London and Europe for the FCO, he returned to China in 1964-1966 as the First Secretary of the Embassy in Beijing, and witnessed the initial propaganda of the Cultural Revolution, which he described as a 'visual and aural attack' in the Yangtze River valley.[7]

His next work in the Far East was significant, acting as Political Adviser to Governor of Hong Kong, 1974–77:

He was also a key figure in planning the handover of the British colony of Hong Kong to China, which eventually took place in 1997. He had been a political adviser to the British Governor of Hong-Kong, Glaswegian Sir Murray MacLehose, from 1974-77 and, a decade later, was instrumental in the creation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration while acting as Assistant Under-Secretary of State (Asia and the Pacific) at the Foreign Office in December 1984. His knowledge of Mandarin and the Chinese psyche were crucial to the eventual handover of the colony by the last governor, his friend Chris Patten, in 1997.[8]

In 1988, he was appointed UK Ambassador to China, a post he held until 1991. This was a crucial period at the end of the Cold War, during which UK-China relations went through turbulence, including the coordination of secret diplomacy. Some of Ambassador Donald's observations of the Tiananmen Square Massacre dating from June 1989 were declassified and published in 2016 and 2017.[9][10]

Personal life

Donald married Janet Hilary Therese Blood in 1958, and they had four sons.

Honours

• CMG, 1979.
• KCMG, 1988.[11]
• Hon. LLD Aberdeen, 1991.

Sources

• DONALD, Sir Alan (Ewen), Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, 2014 (online edition, Oxford University Press, 2014)

References

1. Europa Publications (2003). The International Who's Who 2004. Psychology Press. p. 443. ISBN 978-1-8574-3217-6.
2. OBITUARY Sir Alan Donald
3. "No. 47476". The London Gazette. 28 February 1978. p. 2598.
4. "No. 47596". The London Gazette. 20 July 1978. p. 8701.
5. "No. 47514". The London Gazette. 17 April 1978. p. 4685.
6. "Obituary - Sir Alan Donald, British ambassador during Tienanmen massacre". HeraldScotland. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
7. Dikötter, Frank (5 May 2016). The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962—1976. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4088-5651-2.
8. "Obituary - Sir Alan Donald, British ambassador during Tienanmen massacre". HeraldScotland. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
9. "Alan Donald, British ambassador at time of Tiananmen killings, dies". South China Morning Post. 21 July 2018. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
10. "UK granted 6 special visas to Chinese 'in extreme danger', days after 1989 Tiananmen massacre". Hong Kong Free Press HKFP. 30 December 2016. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
11. "No. 51365". The London Gazette (Supplement). 10 June 1988. p. 4.

External links

• A despatch by Donald, headed "First Impressions of Indonesia", is included in The Spanish Ambassador's Suitcase: Stories from the Diplomatic Bag by Matthew Parris (Penguin, 2012, ISBN 9780241957097)
• A despatch by Donald, headed "China: Valedictory Despatch", is included in Parting Shots by Matthew Parris (Penguin, 2011, ISBN 9780670919291)