I am embarking on a journey that vanishingly few in the country of my birth have taken before: standing for election. I’m standing to be the next Labour MP in my home constituency of Earley and Woodley, in east and south Reading. At a recent gathering with local residents, one person remarked that I sounded optimistic about Britain’s future and asked me where this optimism sprang from. One of the sources of my hope for British democracy lies in living through the opposite: the growing authoritarianism of China.
My family moved to England when I was four. But in 2016, the year of two history-making votes in the UK and US, I was posted to Beijing as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. On my trips back home to the UK, I was often asked whether Chinese citizens have different interior lives to those in Western democracies. What does it feel like to live under authoritarianism? Do people think of themselves as individuals, with individuated rights, freedoms and futures?
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