Charles to boycott Beijing Olympics

For years, the Prince of Wales had a relationship with China that was best described as “frosty”. Now, Charles has snubbed the Chinese government by refusing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing. Prince Charles has told the human rights campaign group Free Tibet that he will not attend the summer games, after campaigners wrote to him urging him to boycott Beijing.

In response, the group received a letter from the Prince's private secretary Clive Alderton, confirming Charles would not attend the opening ceremony. "You asked if the Prince of Wales would be attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008," wrote Alderton. "His Royal Highness will not be attending the ceremony." The letter gives no direct reason for his decision, nor does it say whether Charles has received a formal invitation.

The Prince is an outspoken supporter of the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader Dalai Lama and has met him several times. In 2002 he received at Clarence House two nuns who had been tortured in the notorious Drapchi prison in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. And it was his friendship with the Dalai Lama which led him to miss out the main banquet during Chinese president Jiang Zemin's visit to the UK in 1999. Charles' disastrous relationship with the Chinese culminated with the leak of his diaries written at the time of the Hong Kong handover in 1997 in which he referred to senior officials participating as "appalling old waxworks". Recently, however, he has been wooed by the Chinese, and particularly their new ambassador in London, Fu Ying, who had made it her personal mission to encourage him to attend the Olympics.

Meanwhile the Prince became the world's longest-serving heir apparent yesterday, notching up a record 59 years and 74 days in his wait to be Britain's king. Charles has surpassed the previous record set by Edward VII when he finally succeeded Queen Victoria to the throne in 1901. Charles's record comes after the Queen, Elizabeth II, surpassed her great-great-grandmother Victoria as Britain's oldest serving monarch late last year.