True blue mansion for Red Capitalist's son

WHEN Chinese communists sing the revolutionary anthem The East is Red it is unlikely they are thinking about the rolling downs of East Sussex in England.

But this bizarre juxtaposition is nearer reality with news that Larry Yung Chi-kin, chairman of the Chinese state investment vehicle China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC), has bought Birch Grove, the family home in East Sussex of the late British prime minister Harold Macmillan, later elevated to the peerage under the title of Lord Stockton.

A secretary for Mr Yung, son of Chinese vice-president Rong Yiren, known in China as the Red Capitalist, confirmed he had bought the 14-bedroom country house with 335 hectares of grounds near the village of Chelwood Gate, but she refused to give details of the purchase or the price paid.

Neither would she comment on the irony that the head of a maverick communist company should buy the country retreat of one of the most aristocratic prime ministers of this century.

The managing agent for the house, James Tillard, of estate agents Humberts, said Birch Grove had been sold privately to an ''overseas buyer'' and he could not speculate on the price.

But the director of the John D Wood estate agency, Simon De Boinville, said it was unlikely it would have been less than the GBP5 million (HK$58.5 million) asked by Lord Stockton's grandson, the Earl of Stockton, who put the house and estate on the market in 1989, three years after the former prime minister's death.