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Kow-tow Watch

Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Step forward Brian Roper, Vice Chancellor of London Metropolitan University (or City and North London polys, as were):

"Brian Roper, vice-chancellor of the university, expressed in a letter to the Chinese embassy in London on June 16 his regret of his school's move, saying that offering the degree to the Dalai Lama was not a well-considered decision, according to an embassy official last week.... Angered and offended by the move, Chinese students and Internet users at home and abroad called for a boycott the university, saying its conferment of honours on the Dalai Lama had hurt the feelings of the Chinese people".

Sensitive flowers, aren't they?

"It also has a Free Tibet Society, which advocates the "Independence of Tibet."

A staff member of the Chinese embassy in London said the university's apology is sincere but it is not enough to completely offset the negative effect. "The university should do more to repair its image in the eyes of Chinese students, such as not providing speaking platforms for Tibetan separatists," he said".

Here's a list of other institutions for Beijing to get upset with.

Meanwhile, China Daily has come up with a list of '30 reasons to watch the Beijing Games'.

These include the following:

13. Babies named after the Olympics - "A total of 4,104 Chinese have been named Aoyun (Chinese for "the Olympics")"

20. Highest number of mascots - five. "Multiple Olympic mascots are not uncommon, but for the first time more than three figures will share Summer Olympic mascot duty when the five Fuwa take center stage. Featuring four of China's most popular animals - the fish , the panda, the Tibetan antelope and the swallow - and the Olympic flame.."

21. Venues on fengshui


Well that's certainly overcome my cynicism, and I will be glued to the box for the duration. Blogging may well be light.....

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Consequences? Who cares?

Sunday, June 22, 2008
For your entertainment, here is a commercial for the Lancia Delta. Unlikely to air in these parts as Lancia abandoned the UK market some years ago as they could not overcome a reputation for producing rust buckets



Those eggheads at Lancia parent Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino need to brush up on their knowledge 0f world affairs and Cult Studs, methinks:

"Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said he ''didn't know'' if the commercial had political overtones, but that he ''certainly liked it''. Source

My position on Tibet is a matter of record, so am happy enough for Lancia to align itself with Tibet, but a car manufacturer that builds in the 'People's Republic' of China really should have given the issue more than a nano-second's thought.

Too late now, as "Fiat on Friday apologised to China for a television commercial starring United States actor Richard Gere that it acknowledged ''could disturb the sensibility of the Chinese people''. Sensitive flowers, aren't they?

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Token gesture of the week

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Seeing this headline - Australian athletes will not attend Olympic ceremony - I was gearing up to praise our Antipodean kin and contrast their approach with the kowtowing by the rabble leading this country.

However, it is nothing to do with human rights, still less the occupation of Tibet but rather this:

"Australian Olympic officials have banned the country's athletes from marching at this summer's opening ceremony in Beijing because of concerns about air pollution in the Chinese capital". I am not making this up.

If Oz's athletes, synchronised swimmers and underwater tiddlywinks players have such delicate lungs, is it safe for them to even get off the plane?

Perhaps someone can come up with an inventive excuse for our athletes, underwater tiddlywinks players ete etc?

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Losing something in translation?

Sunday, April 20, 2008
From China Daily:

"Protests against "Tibet independence" continued in several Chinese cities on Sunday. Protestors gathered in front of outlets of the French supermarket chain Carrefour, chanting "Oppose Tibet independence", and "Oppose CNN's anti-China statements" on Sunday morning. Chinese police were monitoring the demonstrations, which had no effect on the supermarkets' normal operations, Xinhua said. More than 1,000 students and citizens in front of the Carrefour in Xi'an (Xian is about as far from Lhasa as Lerwick from London....C) held banners, saying "Strongly oppose CNN's anti-China statements" and "Condemn Tibet secessionist in France tearing up the Five-Star Red Flag"(I really like this one. The language that is, not the sentiment. C). They chanted "Support the Olympics", "Go China" and "Condemn CNN" through loudspeakers".

Maybe they sounded snappier in the original. Also, could they not have wheeled out 'running dog lackeys', just for old times' sake?

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A bit of gratuitous Jowell bashing

Monday, April 07, 2008
A video, not necessarily the original, has appeared at the Number 10 site:



Note that Tessa refers to the Olympic values of 'excellence, tolerance and friendship'. Yes she does, right there at about 40 seconds in. They are bland enough for Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il to sign up to, and not even remotely in conflict with the policies of the 'People's Republic' of China.

However, a little digging reveals points one and two of the charter:

1. Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
2. The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

And what is the most basic ethical premise, one shared by every ethical system and every serious religion?: the Golden Rule, or do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Lest the Chinese government is uncertain how this might apply to cracking heads in Tibet, I offer this from the Analects:

Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself

Or from the Buddha:

One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter

Meanwhile, Jowell is also noting the people in Downing Street to greet what is basically a rather stylised hurricane lamp, without being honest enough to say that they were hand picked.

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The London protests

But for pressure of work I would have gone up to town to cry 'shame' at the Olympic quislings and so forth yesterday, and rather regret that I could not. So, a big round of virtual applause to those who braved the intemperate weather.

Generally speaking, marches, demonstrations and so forth are dismal failures in terms of the outward aim - to change the policies of one's own government or that of another. However, the marchers, banner wavers also have themselves as a psychological target, and Countryside Alliance, CND, stop the war types etc will all have felt a nice rosy glow of self-righteousness and taken away a sense that they had at least done something.

Where the Tibet protests succeeded was not in persuading the 'People's Republic' of China to decolonise Tibet (and come to that East Turkestan), which they are not likely to do any time soon, alas, but to ensure that Tibet's struggle and the vile human rights record of the 'People's Republic' of China becomes global news, and penetrates even the consciousnesses of the boneheaded retired athletes and ''ims and 'ers off the telly' who judged that getting their faces in the papers (that they might plug memoirs, diet supplements, television programmes or whatever) was more important than exhibiting even the most elementary sense of decency. So, Trevor MacDonald, Konnie Huq and the rest of you - avaunt.

That the preservation of law and order was part delegated to a series of Chinese secret policemen / special forces types (they certainly weren't athletes, were they?) is also profoundly shocking.

Meanwhile, make haste to the Number Ten site, and attempt to play the embedded video of the Dour One doing an embarrassed nod at the torch. And fancy, just fancy, a message flashes up saying 'sorry, this video is no longer available'.

And since I am having lots of fun with wonder that is hindsight, enjoy this from Livingstone's site:

"On Sunday 6th April the Olympic flame will be carried across London as part of the global Olympic Torch Relay. Large crowds are expected to cheer on the 80 torchbearers, including Paralympians, Olympic athletes and celebrities as they carry the torch through ten London boroughs from Wembley to Greenwich".

One final (?) afterthought: it is a desperate shame that Peter Hain is no longer in the government, as it would have been delightful watching him trying to square collective ministerial responsibility with his known stances on 'normal sport in an abnormal society'.

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Dignity in politics. How she is not exhibited.

Monday, March 31, 2008
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the not especially awful (by Central Asian standards) leader of Kazakhstan has decided that he is just the man to carry the Olympic torch when it reaches Almaty.

At 67 he is neither in the first flush of youth nor in need of round the clock medical attention, but NN has opted not to overdo it: "Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev will run a 250m stretch of the torch relay".

Perhaps 'run' is too strong a word. Saunter, perhaps?

I would not fancy the chances of any Tibetans disruption, as "Kazakhstan has spent $2.5 million for the preparations around the torch relay...Almaty has also invested in security, having as many as 5,000-armed policemen to watch over the the relay run". Shame.

(I am deeply peeved to have discovered that I had got my Jimmy Carter anecdotes mixed up, and the killer rabbit did not attack him while he was jogging, otherwise I was going to offer that up as a terrible warning to Nazarbayev).

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Shameful. Just shameful.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
WorldPublicOpinion.org has polled the population of these parts, the US, France, India, South Korea and Indonesia on the opening stages of the genocidal campaign of the Chinese government against the Tibetan people, and less than two thirds of Britons manage to sign up to this, extraordinarily mild, statement:

"Critics of China say that it should allow Tibet to have autonomy, to preserve its traditional culture and to allow the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet".

In contrast, 19% go along with this, "China says that Tibet has long been part of China, that Tibet has benefited from modernization, and that the Dalai Lama should not be allowed to return because he aims to split Tibet from China". And the mouth-breathing remainder (18%) have no opinion.

Meanwhile, top marks to South Korea, with 84% supporting the first statement, and shame on the 63% of Indians who either support the 'People's Republic' or have no opinion. I imagine that the Koreans are well aware of how Beijing used to regard Korea as being its own private plaything too.

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The 'hotline' that is really a tepidline

Friday, February 29, 2008
The hotline between the White House and the Kremlin was a cartoon / popular fiction staple for decades, not that I suppose it has even been dusted in living memory, but the Chinese have decided that they want a link to Uncle Sam too.

Not grotesquely inappropriate, but note this sequence of events:

"The two sides reached consensus to set up the hotline during US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' visit to China in November 2007"


....


And today: "China and the United States officially signed here on Friday an agreement on setting up a military hotline between the two defense departments".

There you have it - a need so pressing that it has taken two months to sign on the dotted line.

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An Olympic disaster on the horizon.

Monday, January 28, 2008
But this time it is the Chinese who have problems, rather than us - lots and lots (and lots) of unsold tickets:

"Only 450,000 tickets for this summer's Olympic Games have been successfully allocated, accounting for about a quarter of the tickets available for sale in the second phase, the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee said on Sunday". Source

Clearly there will be no problem filling the stadium for the more appealing athletic events, but I will offer the usual odds that thousands of unfortunates will be bussed in to fill up arenas and the like for lesser events. Come 2012, if the wretched event has not been cancelled, expect an awful lot of complimentary tickets being dished out to school children.

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The perils of over-reliance on Wikipedia

Wednesday, December 05, 2007
The full story of this Beijing menu is to be found here.

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The 'People's Republic' about to scrap May Day

Friday, November 16, 2007
Is the 'People's Republic' of China. I have simplified a little, as May Day appears to remain a public holiday, but it is set to lose its status as part of a Golden Week, these being periods where "Three days paid holiday are given, and the surrounding weekends are re-arranged so that workers in Chinese companies always have seven continuous days of holiday".

Following a less than full poll of the Chinese populace - 1.3 million out of 1,321,851,888, or 0.1% of them, "88 percent supported increasing the number of official holidays from 10 to 11; and 62 percent agreed to including the three traditional holidays - Tomb-Sweeping Day (1), Dragon-Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival - in public holidays" and doing away with the May Day week.


Anyway, a fine example, so perhaps we can scrap May Day and let the Chicago 'Haymarket Martyrs' of 1866 rest in peace. Trafalgar Day works for me.



(1) - Also known as the rather more appealing 'Clear Brightness Festival'.

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What are they so worried about?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The thugs in Peking have got a little tetchy about arms sales by the US to Taiwan:

"China on Tuesday urged the United States to immediately cancel arms sale programs, stop arms sales and military links with Taiwan....China firmly opposes to arms sales by the US government to Taiwan, and had already raised strong objection and solemn representations to the United States, said Liu, noting that this has been a consistent and clear stance of China....Regardless of China's solemn stance and firm opposition, the United States took wrong actions in a row to sell the the P-3C anti submarine warfare aircraft, the Patriot II antimissile equipment upgrade systems and other advanced weapons, Liu said.Such wrongdoing severely violated the US government's commitments made to China in the joint communique signed between the two countries on August 17, 1982, rudely interfered in China's internal affairs, endangered Chinese national security and peaceful unification, also disturbed the improvement and development of China-US relations, Liu stressed".

So, in other words they are not best pleased. I would have thought that the 'People's Republic' would be all in favour of the Taiwanese 'wasting' their money, as I do not think that they are going to be storming the beaches of the mainland any time soon.

Here are some comparisons of military strength:

Standing army manpower

Taiwan - 300, 000
'PR'C - 2,250,000

Fit for military service

Taiwan - 3,870,000
'PR'C - 281,240,272 men (word used advisedly)

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Good news for the residents of Chester Square

Thursday, November 08, 2007
The Daily Telegraph (paper edition only) notes that Mr Tony and his brood are proving a right nuisance to the blameless residents of said London square.

However, salvation might be at hand, as he has just been offered 'a luxury villa' worth £2.4m in the doubtless delightful Dongguan, "a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong province, People's Republic of China [and] an important industrial city located in the Pearl River Delta". Apparently it has the world's largest mall, so La Booth would approve, although she might have trouble with the concept of payment....

And what has he done to deserve this bounty? Shilling for Guangda Group, a property company that has been funding his Chinese jaunt. Whether he will take up the offer of the villa is as yet unknown, but he also picked up £240,000 for a three hour trip to the property development. While normally I would sympathise with just about anyone who has suffer three hours of guff from property developers, that is a fair scratch for his troubles.

At least one of the reporting papers does not think Guangda got its value for money: "Like reports made by some local officials, there was nothing new in his views ... so was the speech worth the large sums of money paid out by local officials and businesses?...We should exercise less ostentatiousness and vanity ... learn more new and genuine knowledge -- especially when we are using even a penny of taxpayers' money".

So, the Blair 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People' tour would appear to have added the 'People's Republic' of China to the existing successes of dear old Blighty and Israel.

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Friends in low places

Friday, September 21, 2007
Taiwan has been turned down for UN membership for the 15th year in succession, to no-one's surprise.

However, here is the honour roll of countries that supported its application one way or another:

  • The Gambia
  • Honduras
  • Palau
  • St Vincent & The Grenadines
  • Solomon Islands

Well done people, but do not expect to be getting New Year cards from the PRC.

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Promising signs from China

Saturday, September 08, 2007
"Chinese police will intensify its monitoring and crackdown on "hostile forces and evil cults" in the run-up to the 17th national congress of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), a senior security official has said". Source

Looking bad for Marx, Lenin, Engels, Mao and all of the other prophets of the God that failed, eh?

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90 billion chopsticks

Friday, August 10, 2007
That is the number of disposable chopsticks the population of China went through last year. Quite a few then.

However, the secretary general of the China Cuisine Association has called upon the public to "abandon the use of disposable chopsticks for the good of their health and the environment". Source.

Now everything I have seen suggests that bamboo is the raw material used to produce disposable chopsticks, so I am a little curious that the debate is being framed in terms of "a cost to the environment of about 25 million trees".

Moreover, "Both restaurant owners and consumers prefer them, their supporters say, and an industry has grown up around their manufacture".

They'll be installing a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City next. Well, actually they already have .

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Hurrah for Canada

Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Or rather two suicidally reckless extraordinarily brave Canadians, who unveiled a pro Tibetan independence banner on the Great Wall, and kept it there for 90 minutes. More here.

The two bold Canadians, Melanie Raoul and Sam Price, members of Students for a Free Tibet have been hauled off in the Chinese equivalent of the black maria, and are yet to be heard from.

The action, naturally, is on youtube:



The comments on the video are extraordinarily telling.... Still, I'm locked out from the 'People's Republic' of China by the Great Firewall of China, so I'm not anticipating a blizzard of Pekiing's straw men and women telling me what a dirty gwailo I am.

The story is all over the North American media, but would seem to be insufficiently newsworthy for a certain broadcaster that does, however, sees fit to drivel on at length about the forthcoming Olympics in Peking.

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Bathos exemplified

Monday, July 02, 2007
From a piece on the tourism market in the 'People's Republic' of China:

"In the world's most populous nation, a tourist can find tranquility in the remote mountains of Tibet, visit ancient archaeological sites such as the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an, climb the Great Wall, party in the big cities, relax on a southern island beach and eat several types of Chinese food".

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