The billionaire financier Mike Bloomberg was forced to apologise to hundreds of guests at a major Asian business event in Singapore this week after complaints about a speech by Boris Johnson that robustly criticised China.

The former UK prime minister, the after-dinner speaker at the flagship Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Tuesday, was said to have described China as a “coercive autocracy” to about 500 Asian businesspeople, investors and diplomats. …

Bloomberg, who invited Johnson and whose organisation was hosting the event in partnership with the Singapore government, acknowledged at the conference on Thursday that some attendees may have been “insulted or offended” by Johnson’s remarks.

But the businessman, a former mayor of New York and friend of Johnson, clarified that they were “his thoughts and his thoughts alone”. He added: “To those of you who were upset and concerned by what the speaker said, you have my apologies.”

[How else would one describe China? “Coercive autocracy” is a rather polite way of saying “totalitarian tyranny.” — Ed]