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The jingoistic genie
DESPITE what the government has told us about the unity of the Chinese people as they shudder beneath the waves of foreign hypocrisy and prejudice, dissenting voices do occasionally show through. Unfortunately, they are then drowned out by the white noise of mass patriotic indignation and the hair-trigger hypersensitivities of the country's "netizens", and we are left to wonder what rough beast now slouches towards Beijing to be born.
We are accustomed, by now, to seeing angry bulletin board messages comparing the recent errors of judgment by a number of foreign news agencie...
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WORLD: |
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Anthropogenesis
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LAST WEEK Me Old China had the great pleasure of meeting the articulate and urbane Yvo de Boer, the head of the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, who repeated the usual post-apocalyptic scare stories about the impact of global warming on countries like China. Among the catastrophic consequences of wanto...
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CHINA: |
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Seeking propaganda through facts
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GEORGE ORWELL once drew attention to a tendency among certain members of the intelligentsia to identify wholeheartedly with foreign countries, ideologies or religions in order to evade the pervasive pressures of patriotism and social conformity. Orwell cited G.K. Chesterton, "a writer of considerable talent who used it to suppress both h...
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SHANGHAI: |
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Shanghai protects environment shock
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IN 1805, seven of the most powerful pirate groups in China decided to form a federation, whereupon they carved up the coast between them. Eventually, the British Navy turned up, and using Hong Kong as their base to trade tea, silk and opium, they sought to set up a pirate-free zone all along China's eastern seaboard. During a routine patrol of the ...
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"They must have known"
FIRST THE...
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The whir of bicycle spokes
SO, WE on...
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Poverty and talking frogs
THE PEOPLE of the Chinese countryside, like people in all cou...
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