Welcome back to bribes, swindler steel. I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today's podcast is a very difficult and emotional conversation with Peter Humphrey.

Peter is a highly respected British compliance professional who was operating in China when he and his

Chinese American wife, Ying, were arrested, tried, and imprisoned in separate Chinese prisons.

Peter, I'm going to let you tell this story. Why don't, why don't you start at the beginning

and help us understand your history with China?

You speak the language and you spent a great deal of your career there.

My love affair with China has lasted for more than 40 years.

I first became interested in China when I was a teenager at school in the UK and trying to think about what I should study

at university. I was a little bit bored with the usual subjects like European languages

and so on, but I was a linguist and I wanted to do something challenging. And this was a moment

when China was opening up a crack.

It was cultural revolution time, but it was opening up a crack.

We saw the appearance of Mark Angelo Antonio's documentary on Chinese life under the Cultural Revolution.

We saw Nixon go to China. We saw ping pong diplomacy.

We saw China join the United Nations. And all these things aroused my curiosity. And so I ended up

going to study Chinese at the University of Durham in the UK, where I completed a degree in Chinese

studies and then went off to China on a postgraduate

scholarly exchange which led me to teach and eventually led me into journalism. I spent about

almost 20 years as a journalist covering not only the China region various times,

but also other regions, including Eastern Europe and the Balkans, which sort of made me

something of a communist affairs specialist as well as a China specialist. And after nearly 20 years in journalism,

I decided to try something different. I moved into business and joined the investigation and

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