A long time ago, I was in the People’s Republic of China with a friend of mine who had grown up there and spoke Mandarin fluently. I asked him to translate for me as I interviewed the owner of a sneaker factory (if I remember the incident correctly). I am not sure how many questions I asked—one? two?—before my friend and the footwear maker were off and running in their own unintelligible conversation. Which my friend later summarized for me in a few sentences.
No deliberate flouting of my request was involved. My friend simply lacked the training, patience, and/or presence of mind to stick to the requested task, that of interpreter. An interpreter is “someone who translates for individuals or groups conversing in different languages.” That’s it. He is not expected to be an independent interlocutor, making sure that his own viewpoint, observations, questions, and agenda also get a fair shake.
There’s more than one way for an “interpreter” to go off the rails. My friend was an innocent. Not this other guy, whose obnoxiousness is getting attention largely because it provides yet more evidence of the variety and extent of Chinese Communist Party influence and of the ability and willingness of CCP agents to harass innocents notionally safe from the purview of the People’s Republic.
Hong Qi
Last December, an “interpreter” supposedly working for United Kingdom police took the opportunity to berate Chinese dissident Hong Qi (shown above) when Qi called the police after losing access to his bank accounts. Qi is known for having managed to remotely trigger a projector to cast a protest against the CCP after leaving China last year (The Guardian, May 30, 2026).
The Chinese national rang 101, the UK non-emergency number, on 20 December and asked to speak to the closest police force via an interpreter out of concern he would have to sleep rough with his wife and two teenage daughters due to lack of funds….
Qi, 43, claims the interpreter assigned to the call launched a political tirade, asking him why he did not “love China” and taunting him for his lack of money….
When Qi attempted to convey the desperation of his situation, he claims the interpreter refused to pass the message to the police representative on the call.
“I will not translate your emotions,” the interpreter said, according to Qi. “On what grounds should the British help you? If you have money, it is convenient everywhere.”
On 21 January, 22 days after he made a complaint, Devon and Cornwall police informed Qi, who has recently been granted asylum in the UK, that responsibility for the interpreter lay with a contractor that is paid £130,000 a year to provide translation services.
The contractor did not respond to a request for comment. The force has failed to provide a copy of the recording to Qi despite requests. The Information Commissioner’s Office has noted the force’s breach and issued a reprimand.
The CCP agent’s harassment of Hong Qi is one horrible thing. Another is the indifference that Hong Qi encountered when he reported the harassment. But how did things even get as far as they did? The hostility of the “interpreter” and the fact that he was doing much more than translating must have been obvious to the police officer or officers for whom he was “interpreting.” So why didn’t the UK police in the room or on the line put an immediate stop to it and ask the “interpreter” what the hell he was doing? They couldn’t understand the language, but they certainly must have understood the vibes.
David Wilson, author of a government-sponsored report that discusses CCP attempts to infiltrate “the interpreting community,” says: “The United [Front] Workers Department will co-opt everybody. We have had it that people will absolutely not talk in front of interpreters. So we have had compromise. This is not unusual. The compromise will come both from the Chinese state and organised crime groups.” But UK institutions could not be so easily compromised if they were not so easy to compromise.
The UK police and government need more Mandarin-speaking interpreters, says Wilson. Yes. Vetted interpreters.
