Monday, July 20, 2009

The Onion Does China

The Onion turns its satirical eye on China, with hilarious if not entirely PC results -
Here's a screenshot for posterity, because their "special issues" tend to go back to normal pretty quickly.

I always think it's a little odd that the Chinese government don't have anyone whose default assumption is that they're in the right. Whenever a Western or a Western-aligned country does something morally... questionable, you can count on conservatives to defend it. Whereas countries with a history of Western exploitation generally enjoy the benefit of the liberal doubt. But China, almost uniquely, gets it from left, right, and centre equally.

I remember a colleague's astonishment when a Chinese post-doc expressed the opinion that Tibet was part of China and should remain so. This was an idea that she'd just never heard before, and she clearly thought it was entirely bizarre. Yet it was only 40 years ago that many French people were of the opinion that L’Algérie est française et le restera - Algeria! And there are still people in Northern Ireland who might kill you if you suggest that that province doesn't belong to Britain.

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