Sir John Henry Keswick, KCMG was an influential Scottish businessman in China and Hong Kong.
16 Facts About John Keswick
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John Keswick was a representative of the Special Operations Executive, a British intelligence service during the Second World War.
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John Keswick's father, Henry Keswick, son of William Keswick, was a Jardine tai-pan and a Conservative Member of Parliament.
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Sir John followed his father and grandfather into Jardine in 1929 at the age of 23.
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John Keswick worked in Shanghai from 1931 until the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe in 1939.
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John Keswick then went to Chungking, the wartime capital of China and worked for the Minister of Economic Warfare in the wartime government, attached to the British Embassy as a Special Operations Executive Oriental Mission's representative.
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John Keswick negotiated with Chiang Kai-shek for SOE to develop training facilities including the Special Training School on his territory in January 1942.
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John Keswick was transferred to Lord Mountbatten as a liaison officer with the Southeast Asia Command.
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John Keswick was the taipan of Jardine from 1952 to 1956 in Hong Kong and was appointed to the Executive Council.
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John Keswick was the president of the Sino-British Trade Council from 1961 to 1973 and was at one time president of the China Association and vice-president of the Great Britain-China Centre.
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In 1979 when Deng Xiaoping seized power after the Cultural Revolution, Sir John Keswick visited China with the Great Britain-China Centre delegation led by Malcolm MacDonald, former British High Commissioner in Southeast Asia and a long-time friend of Zhou Enlai, and included Sir Harold Thompson and Elizabeth Wright.
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John Keswick developed a friendship with Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China, and Madame Soong Ching-ling, wife of Sun Yat-sen during his stay in China.
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John Keswick was a Chinese art collector, particularly contemporary paintings.
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John Keswick married Clare Mary Alice Cynthia Catherine Celia Elwes, youngest daughter of tenor Gervase Elwes and Lady Winefride, daughter of the 8th Earl of Denbigh.
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John Keswick was a writer, gardener and designer and married an American architect and writer, Charles Jencks in 1978.
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Together with his daughter, Sir John founded the Hollywood Trust in 1981 to address problems that disadvantaged young people in Dumfries and Galloway faced, and in 1979 the Keswick Foundation for mental health in Hong Kong.