Listening in on China during the Abdication Crisis in 1936/1937

Sinclair McKay’s new book The Secret Listeners: How the Wartime Y Service Intercepted the Secret German Codes for Bletchley Park is a fascinating study of the men and women who worked around the world before and during World War Two listening to what was being said. One small, but interesting, China nugget in the book – Y Service (British Signals Intelligence) operated Y Stations globally, including in Hong Kong. That station listened in to Chinese radio stations and communications to see if anything worth knowing was being said. Apparently, according to the book, during the abdication crisis of December 1936 and into 1937 Chinese radio stations discussed and commented on the abdication of Edward VIII and his relationship with Wallis Simpson a lot. The Y Service listeners were surprised enough to report that the coverage of the crisis was overwhelmingly anti Mrs Simpson. Exactly why Chinese radio stations disliked Wallis Simpson so much is not quite clear – surely her infamous “Lotus Year” in Peking and Shanghai was not the problem, nor was there any reason the Chinese should feel particularly warm to Edward VIII. I can only think that they just felt the whole thing a bit “off” for forcing such a drastic step? Anyway, the woman was lambasted in China it seems.