Racism row for top HSBC executive – and UK’s former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia – as he tells students: ‘The Arabic mind is empty’

• Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles allegedly said: ‘the Arabic mind is empty compared to the Chinese’ at a dinner at the University of Oxford last month

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

Speaking at a dinner at the University of Oxford last month, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles allegedly told the audience that he wished he had learnt to speak Chinese, instead of Arabic, when he was a diplomat because China is ‘more interesting’.

Sir Sherard, HSBC’s head of public affairs, declared that ‘the Arabic mind is empty compared to the Chinese’, according to sources who relayed his comments to The Mail on Sunday. His alleged incendiary 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 definitely very humiliating to the Arabs. To say that their brain is empty is a huge insult. I don’t know how a former diplomat like him managed to say these kinds of things.’

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles allegedly told a dinner at the University of Oxford last month that he wished spoke Chinese, instead of Arabic, because China is ‘more interesting’. The HSBC executive is pictured at Bloomberg LP’s London offices, July 6

In a statement, Sir Sherard, 68, who is also chairman of the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) lobbying group, last night said: ‘These selective comments, which have been taken out of context, were personal remarks made at a private event to raise the understanding of China.

‘They do not reflect the views of either HSBC or CBBC.’

Details of the speech come just days after he apologised for remarks at a separate closed-door event in London in June. On that occasion, he branded 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 beginning 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 understood that during an off-the-cuff speech to welcome the students, Sir Sherard told them that after joining the Foreign Office in the late 1970s he opted 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 the speech was not recorded. One of those who was there claimed the former diplomat said he regretted not learning Chinese because ‘the Arabic mind is empty compared to the Chinese’. A second person recalled that in a ‘jokey way’ Sir Sherard claimed that ‘compared with the Chinese mind the Arab mind is relatively empty’. Sir Sherard did not deny making the remarks when The Mail on Sunday approached him at his £2 million home in West London on Friday.

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles (pictured) declared that ‘the Arabic mind is empty compared to the Chinese’, according to sources

He was Britain’s ambassador in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006. The Saudis reportedly liked the tough way the man they called ‘Abu Henry’ – after his oldest son – responded to Al Qaeda terrorist attacks.

However, he was forced to make a grovelling apology to the people of Nottingham when he claimed that the streets of Saudi cities were safer than theirs. Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, paid glowing public tribute when Sir Sherard, who had two pet falcons named Nour and Alwaleed, left to take up the UK ambassador’s post in Afghanistan.

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

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

HSBC declined to comment.

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