Racism squabble for HSBC chief executive – and former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia – as he tells students ‘Arab mind is empty’

A top HSBC executive and former Britain’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia was at the center of a racism storm last night over claims he had told students that ‘the Arab mind is empty’.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles said at a dinner at Oxford University last month that he wished he had learned to speak Chinese instead of Arabic when he was a diplomat because China is “more interesting”.

Sir Sherard, HSBC’s head of public affairs, stated that “the Arab mind is empty compared to the Chinese,” according to sources who relayed his comments to The Mail on Sunday. His alleged inflammatory remarks were condemned.

“It is racist and not acceptable at all,” Abdel Bari Atwan, an author and prominent Arab commentator, told this newspaper last night.

“It is certainly very humiliating for the Arabs. To say their brain is blank is a huge insult. I don’t understand how a former diplomat like him could have said things like that.’

In a statement last night, Sir Sherard, 68, who is also chairman of the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) lobby group, said: “These selective comments, taken out of context, were personal remarks made in a private meeting. event to increase understanding of China.

“They do not reflect the view of HSBC or CBBC.”

Details of the speech come just days after he apologized for comments made at a separate closed-door event in London in June. On that occasion, he labeled Britain “weak” for bowing to US demands in its approach to Beijing.

The MoS has learned that his more recent comments were made at the start of a dinner hosted by the Great Britain-China Centre, a government-funded quango attended by so-called ‘future leaders’ who are embarking on a ‘crash course’. on China.

It is clear that Sir Sherard, in a noncommittal speech to welcome the students, said that after joining the Foreign Office in the late 1970s, he chose to learn to speak Arabic because of the importance of the Middle East to world affairs.

He joked that the department was known as the “camel corps” at the time. The MoS understands that he was not speaking from notes and that the speech was not recorded. One of the attendees claimed that the former diplomat said he regretted not learning Chinese because “the Arab mind is empty compared to the Chinese.” A second person recalled Sir Sherard stating in a “funny way” that “compared to the Chinese mind, the Arab mind is relatively empty.” Sir Sherard did not deny making the comments when The Mail on Sunday approached him at his £2million west London home on Friday.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles (pictured) stated that ‘the Arab mind is empty compared to the Chinese’, sources say

He was the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2006. The Saudis were reportedly pleased with the harsh way the man they dubbed “Abu Henry” – after his eldest son – responded to the Al Qaeda terror attacks.

However, he was forced to apologize to Nottingham residents when he claimed that the streets of Saudi cities were safer than their own. Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, paid warm tribute as Sir Sherard, who had two pet falcons, Nour and Alwaleed, left to take up the post of British ambassador to Afghanistan.

Those present at the dinner also claim that Sir Sherard criticized Lord Patten of Barnes, the chancellor of the University of Oxford and the last British governor of Hong Kong, for knowing ‘nothing’ about China.

Sir Sherard, who was head of the Hong Kong Department of the Foreign Office in the mid-1990s, reportedly clashed with Lord Patten over moves to democratize the colony before its 1997 handover to China.

HSBC declined to comment.