Diaoyu Islands: A Very Dumb, Risky Move

Having thumbed through Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War, China extended it's air defence zone, whatever that is, five days ago to included the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands.

The new zone, which has been pretty much ignored by everyone, including that guy with the gyrocopter in Mad Max 3, is essentially nothing more than dick-measuring/pissing contest with China pitched in a battle of will against, er, China.

Technically, the ADIZ requires flight plans and radio frequencies to be registered with China when flights are routed through the airspace.  The deep sighs from the Pentagon were palpable when a spokesman reiterated American's non-compliance with the redefined zone.

Washington “continued to follow our normal procedures, which include not filing flight plans, not radioing ahead and not registering our frequencies”.

Of course, docking about diplomatically comes naturally to Chinese politicians, who have managed to pick the worst place in the world to play chicken.  The China Daily, usually so thoughtful and even-minded about such issues once again choked on it's own baozi writing that

“The Japanese and U.S. complaints that the ADIZ is a 'unilateral' move that changes 'the status quo' are inherently false.  The U.S. did not consult others when it set up and redrew its ADIZs. Japan never got the nod from China when it expanded its ADIZ, which overlaps Chinese territories and exclusive economic zone. Under what obligation is China supposed to seek Japanese and U.S. consent in a matter of self-defence?

The obligation of starting a war with two countries would probably be a pretty big obligation, but China must play the role of the victim in all of this, even though they're the ones that changed the rules in the first place.

Where Japan is involved, there's lots of complaining that nothing is fair, and that the evil Japanese devils will invade the motherland given half a chance, which given the rate at which China is claiming obscure islands in the area, won't be far off.  The China Daily piece goes on (and on and on) saying that the new zoning doesn't target any specific country, just like Homeland Security doesn't target any specific racial group.

The ADIZ is completely unenforceable, unless Xi Jing Ping plans to go a bit Kim Jong Il on y'all by shooting down commercial passenger aircraft, and taking potshots with anti-aircraft fire at US Air Force planes probably isn't going to secure a Nobel Peace Prize.

China complained (as loud as ever) that the US is taking sides, although with a large military presence in both South Korea and Japan, it was hardly surprising that the US couldn't give tinker's cuss about the new ADIZ.  Psychotically changing rules and regulations in the bi-polar way that characterises Chinese diplomacy might well bolster support for the Party with the Chinese, but I just get the feeling China really has to wake-up around to the idea that no-one  gets it's deal with posturing and preening instead of actually doing something.

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The Porkopalypse: Half of China's Antibiotics Given to Livestock

Over prescription of antibiotics is a common practice in China, with patients routinely given drugs they don't need when they are suffering from viral infections.  Disturbingly, half the antibiotics in China aren't given to people, but they're crammed down the gullets of the nations livestock.

Unsurprisingly, a research team led by American and Chinese scientists found "diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms.".  The numbers in China are a little alarming, but it's worth pointing out, as the graph below shows, that Chinese use of antibiotics in farming is nowhere near the levels that the US uses them. Also, pigs in the US routinely test positive for a number of antibiotic resistant pathogens.

 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="630"] Cattle to human use of antibiotics in the USA[/caption]

Chinese poultry and pork firms have been steadily increasing production, investing in US companies in order to bring US-style food processing techniques to China.

Chinese pork farming is changing rapidly. As recently as 2001, an analysis by the Dutch bank Rabobank found about three-quarters of China's hogs came from small backyard operations. By 2010, that figure had fallen by half—and the percentage of its hog supply emerging from factory-like facilities tripled, reaching 15 percent.

With chicken processor Tyson aiming to process 3 million chickens a week by 2014, they are capitalizing on the preference of Chinese customers preference for foreign food products, believing them to be safer than those produced by Chinese companies.  Pork is the Chinese meat of choice, and keeping up with demand, as well as keeping prices down can only be achieved by the use of antibiotics to keep hogs healthy enough to be slaughtered.

Unfortunately, the factories are expanding production far too quickly, and keeping animals in cramped conditions has led to massive amounts of stocks being left to rot.  With attempts to keep pork prices down simply by producing more has backfired spectacularly on the Chinese companies that have little experience in running a proper hog processing factory.  China consumes six times more pork than the US, but health and safety regulations are routinely violated by Chinese food producers.  Central government is far more worried about the availability of pork than any other foodstuff, misguided attempts to simply satisfy demand are probably doing more harm than good when it comes to keeping the Chinese fat and happy.

 

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No Historical Evidence Found for South China Sea Island Claims

A shaky grasp of world history has led China laying claim to almost every island in the South China Sea.  Well, those that could be considered mineral and oil rich, anyway.  At first it was great way to get in some Jap bashing, but the Fillipino's have emerged as the latest bad guys that are, according to maps drawn up a millennia ago (probably), they are occupying Chinese territory.

Since April last year, Chinese vessels have been spotted in the area and fishermen detained around the Scarborough Shoal reef.  The detentions were followed with the confiscation of cargo, in one case consisting of illegally collected sharks and giant clams.

In a translated interview from the Chinese state television that appeared in the China Daily, renowned and well-known military expert Major General Zhang Zhaozhong spoke of the strategy that China had to recover the islands.

“What one has stolen has to be returned. No matter how long the Philippines have illegally occupied those Chinese islands and reefs, I believe that it cannot change the fact that those islands and reefs are inherent Chinese territories. However, what shall we do to counter those rude and barbarian acts of the Philippines?”

All of which seems to be a load of hot air, and simply there to rally public opinion when news of the attempts to start construction on Scarborough Shoal.  Concrete slabs had been spotting on the reef, but Chinese officials have denied any knowledge of activity around the shoal.

The historical evidence that the Chinese say they have is shaky at best.  US diplomatic cables that were published by Wikileaks say that the Chinese Ministry of Foriegn Affairs couldn't find any historical evidence to support China's claim that the Spratly Islands had been part of Chinese territory.  .

The MFA Department of Treaty and Law Oceans and Law of the Sea Division Deputy Director Yin Wenqiang told a US embassy political officer on August 30, 2008 that "China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters."

However, the US official said "Yin admitted he is not aware of the historical basis for the 'Nine Dashes'" and only mentioned unspecified "Chinese historical documents" that indicate the basis for China's claims on territory west of the Philippines, according to the cable.

When pressed by the embassy, neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor Beijing University could produce a document that specifically supported the claim that the disputed Spratly Islands were in fact Chinese by sovereignty.  Indeed, the claims seem to have their origins in China's more recent history rather than the ancient links that Chinese officials prefer to quote whenever the dispute comes up.  While the Chinese have been relying on maps drawn up in 1904, a Fillipino map dated 1874 shows that Chinese territory only covered as far as Hainan in the south of China.

Last week, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III cancelled a trip to China, where he was due to attend the China-Association of Southeast Asian Nations Trade Expo.  The President refused to divulge exact details of what led him to cancel at the time, details later emerged that China had demanded that Manilla withdraw the arbitration case that it had brought to the UN.

A question remains that if, by their own admission, China is such a large country, why do they insist on laying claims to random islands in the South China Seas and continue to tussle with other countries about claims to plots of land along it's borders?  In the case of terrirtorial waters around the south of China, Beijing is after control of shipping routes.

Each year, nearly half the world's merchant carriers sail the South China Sea, carrying half the world's crude oil and liquified natural gas.  By forcing this much traffic to obtain permission before setting sail would give Beijing considerable power in the area - as well as controlling shipping traffic, air freight would also fall under it's jurisdiction.

Backing down over claims that islands and land technically owned by other countries isn't an option given the CCP's aggressive domestic policy.  Being seen as reunifying the Chinese state is good for the CCP at home, but doesn't do much to legitimize their superpower status on the international stage.  Rather than rattling it's sabres for the good of it's own reputation, the Chinese would do well to heed the advice that is repeatedly dished out to the US - China should focus on solving it's own internal problems before setting it sights on stirring up trouble outside of it's borders.

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People's Daily Lashes Out Over Syria

Unsurprisingly, given the level of Chinese involvement on Assad's side in the Syrian civil war, The People's Daily has written a bellicose editorial lambasting the US plan to launch air strikes as early as Thursday.

Both Russia and China have stepped up their warnings to the US about possible military action, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said "Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa," he said in a statement.

In an editorial written by "Zheng Song", or The Voice of China, said that the US only want to become involved in the conflict because they want regime change, saying nothing of China's hopes to secure access to oil in the region by providing financial and military support to President Assad.  China's dependency on fossil fuels has led it into something of a power struggle in the region, and they are desperate that the US doesn't get it's hands on Syria's oil like they did after the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Neatly dismissing any talk of human rights abuses, and saying little of the alledged gas attack by pro-Assad forces on Syrian people, China has managed to keep it's involvement apparently limited to calls for more patience regarding the United Nations inspections.  According to reports, China has provided the Syrian army with $300 million worth of arms from 2007-2010, and provided intelligence that helped Syrian forces bomb a western arms convoy earlier this year.

Of the three countries providing support to Assad's regime, China has been the quietest, preferring to take the "non-interference" line when it comes to publicly discussing the civil conflict.

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China: The Space Superpower

Around the same time that the International Space Station is scheduled to be de-orbited, the Chinese say that they plan to have their own space station launched, and a Moon landing is "very much on the cards".

China is working with the UN to host a workshop in manned space flight at the end October, energizing it's own space program when NASA is selling off bits of itself to compete with commercial enterprises like Space X.  China has been pouring money and resources into space exploration, and according to some has leapfrogged it's way to the same point that the US was when the Gemini Program was ended.

Political competition spurred the Gemini and Apollo programs, and space shuttle development, but things have moved on since then.  The competition between the US and the USSR has been replaced by competition from private companies, Space X is already delivering payloads, and two big players - Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corporation are hoping to take astronauts to the ISS up to the end of it's service.

The Chinese space program might do much for flag waving Chinese at home, and further legitimize the CCP in China, international reaction to the plans has been somewhat lukewarm.  They well might be in the space race at long, long last, but with American astronauts using Russian spacecraft to get into orbit, China might well be winning it's space race, but they haven't really looked around at the competition for a good long while.

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Visa Delays Complicating FDA Inspections

US efforts to increase the monitoring of Chinese drug production are being held back by China's refusal to grant visas in any kind of timely fashion.  Since receiving an extra $10m in funding, the FDA has been able to send more inspectors to China, or they would be able to if any diplomatic visas had been granted.  One inspector reportedly withdrew his application after waiting an epic 9 months for his visa.

The FDA wants to add another 10 members of staff to it's China operation, but the reluctance to issue visas by the Chinese embassy has limited visits by FDA staff to short term trips.

“Unlike the inspectors who come for short-term trips from the US, they’re able to develop in-depth knowledge of the Chinese system, which not only benefits American consumers and patients, but also Chinese regulators, who benefit from the training and capacity building that FDA’s in-country staff do,” the FDA spokesman writes us.

“And they’re able to participate in our ongoing efforts to better understand the Chinese regulatory system, so that we can better protect American consumers, and promote public health. We believe that timely issuance of visas for FDA staff will be beneficial to both the US and China, and that it’s in China’s best interest to issue these visas, and move on to our next stage of collaboration"

The FDA is keen to ramp up it's monitoring after the tainted heparin scandal in the country that was linked to 81 deaths in the States.

China's Role in Syria

So much for China's much vaunted non-interference policy.  Between 2007 and 2010, China supplied $3million worth of arms to Assad's regime, and in February of this year, the US imposed sanction on a Chinese company for violating nonproliferation legislation by conducting military transfers to Syria.  But China is providing much more than weapons:

Furthermore, in an interview given to the Financial Times in June, Kadri Jamil, Syrian deputy prime minister for the economy, boasted that China has joined Iran and Russia in delivering $500 million a month in oil and credit to Syria. The majority of Syria’s oil is in the largely rebel-held north and northeast of the country, and the network of pipelines connecting the wells to the population centres are vulnerable to rebel attack. As a result, Syrian oil production has fallen by as much as 95 percent during the ongoing conflict, and the importance of Chinese aid should not be underestimated. Chinese financial and material support supplements Russian and Iranian aid and has allowed the Assad war machine to remain militarily effective.

Supporting Assad also allows the Chinese government to prevent it's already irate Sunni-Mulism majority population from radicalizing.  The government has already blamed Syrian Opposition for the unrest in Xinjiang, claiming that they received training in rebel bases in Syria.

Accusations that the Chinese provided intelligence ahead of an air strike that tagargetted a western weapons convoy surfaced last month.  The region is seen is of some interest to the Chinese because of it's vast, hitherto relatively unexploited natural resources, and the Chinese government has placed particular emphasis on getting those resources before any western coalition forces do like they did in Iraq.

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Don't Get Angry, Get Embarrassed.

I’ve been to America once, and God love it (which I’m told He does) I do want to live there and would spend many happy days in Maspeth, where I stayed courtesy of my friends Dan and Zoe, and watch the evening sky, at first blood red, then cool through the infrared spectrum to a dark, velvet, Guinness black.  The Manhatten skyline - still something that you can’t quite think “men made that” – of the Chrysler Building, the Empire State and the Brooklyn Bridge would be mere silhouettes that melt into the blackness of the night sky.  All of the Disneyesque poeticism pulls into stark contrast the Stephen King nightmare that is dealing with American airlines and American Homeland Security.

My time in America was a fantastic experience bookended by simply the worst travel experience known to humanity.  An experience that would make cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse feel loved.  Rarely have I been made to feel like a criminal in any airport in the world.  Even at Osaka airport, where I was fingerprinted, photographed, medically examined for fear of carrying H1N1 into the country and subject to intense investigation (I was the only foreigner with the documents that supported a one year work permit in the country), I was made to feel at home, wanted and looked after.  The elderly airport official who said “please” about 30 times in the first 10 minutes was polite, knew his stuff, and stood next to me like the grandfather I barely knew as I jumped through all the necessary hoops to get into the country.  Of course, the whole procedure took longer than any airport that I’ve been to, but it was the politeness, the feeling that someone was taking an interest, and the awareness that both of us where at the mercy of a massive administrative machine that made the whole thing much easier.

And in America, I met Seattle Bill.

Bill was fat.  Bill was big and fat.  In fact, almost everyone in America is big and fat.  I don’t mean that they are all doubly fat, I mean that for their height, they are fat.  Bill towered over me, I was eye to eye with what I imagined would be the arcing red, sweated crease in his skin underneath his last rib bone, where  - if he were shirtless – you would see the clear demarcation line between his ribcage and his unsupported intestinal tract.  He was nineteen feet in height and two  Isuzu People Carriers in width.  BP could’ve drilled for oil in his cleavage.  The unfortunate demography of his lower abdomen had forced him to buckle his trousers around his pubic bone, at roughly the point where pubic hair becomes belly hair.  His stomach muscles had long given up on keeping his gut in check, and I wondered how many steps up a flight of stairs he would need before he fell over backwards clutching his chest.

From his waist upwards, he was a big man.  From below the belthoops of his trousers, he was the stallion of a man that his wife had married thirty years, six million Happy Meals and a four million Cokes  ago.  He also had enough weaponry hanging off his low slung belt that would make Simon Mann think ‘that’s a little too much’.  When asked a perfectly reasonable question by one of the Chinese businessmen behind me - “why are there only two immigration officers?  Why do we have to wait?” - Bill pointed a chubby finger as a thick as a sausage and said through pursed lips with a John Wayne locked jaw “They’ll be ready…when I’m ready”.  He waddled off, the miniature shockwaves of his footsteps sent ripples over his tightly clad buttocks.  He presumably went to get a doughnut.

The flight from Beijing to Seattle dumped me in Seattle at 6:40am.  Thanks to the super high tech Homeland Security I made it through immigration in a mere two hours and fifteen minutes.  I had missed my flight by an hour.  The next flight that I could arrange left Seattle at 5pm, went through a time warp, and dumped me at New York JFK around 11pm.  The flight back from New York to Beijing wasn’t fun either, have been delayed for an entire 27 hours in Seattle airport.  The problem was that in America relies on people that have power but no responsibility.

Chris Rock tells a joke in his stand-up routine that he lives in an area that has house owned by Eddie Murphy, Mary J. Bilge, Jay-Z and a white dentist.  Which is exactly the same as the situation here in China, substituting black folks for Chinese, and er, keeping the white folks.  To be a white man in China, as it is in America, is to have won the lottery of life.

I live in a 68 square meter apartment that I pay 3300rmb per month for (330UKP there abouts).  I come from Manchester, UK, work as an English teacher and earn 14000rmb per month, with about 700rmb tax, I have a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, have no intention of paying off my minor student loan, and live quite happily with few money worries apart from the dent that my annual trip to see the folks is going to put in my bank account.  I speak a little bit of high school Spanish, have intermediate Chinese  and do a little of everything from writing the occasional article in a little known magazine that nobody reads, to teaching people to speak English.  In the last years, I’ve returned home for 3 weeks, taken a 10 day vacation in New York, took a month off to visit friends in Chengdu, whilst traveling to Kunming and Lijiang, return back to my apartment in downtown Beijing, and continued working my rather dull job.  When I got suspicious about a lump growing on my lip last month I immediately went to the Hong Kong International Hospital at the Swissotel in Dongsishitiao and happily paid 680rmb to be told that I have a “lesion on lower lip” and was duly given a course of B multivitamins.

A very close friend of mine studied for her master’s degree in Manchester, speaks fluent English and Chinese, and has a prestigious position in a growing African-Chinese company.   She lives on the outskirts of town, is always looking for a roommate to help with the rent, and hasn’t been out of the country for pleasure since she graduated 8 years ago.  Over weekend she was sick, and is considering going to a doctor if she her condition doesn’t improve.  Needless to say, she’s Chinese and I’m not.

China has been taken over by the morals and values crowd, with the censorship of the Internet and the purge of pornography to create a “healthy online environment”, the failed implementation of the Green Dam software, the scrubbing of critical posts about the government and the house arrests of “subversives”.  Quite frankly, the government of China’s morals and values would have more resonance if the Chinese government actually knew what morals and values were, which I don’t think they do.  I don’t really mean that as an insult, but the belief that every Chinese person is heterosexual, that people don’t like looking at pornography (they do) and that in China don’t really knows what’s going on, or that people in China believe that an apartment in China can be rented for twelve dollars isn’t a moral or a value.  It’s just stupid.  What they’re really talking about are superstitions, traditions, fears and personality cults.  Real morals are honesty, fairness, kindness and tolerance.  The others are just bullshit issues that the Chinese government uses to justify its legitimacy.

Morals and values are choices that we make about how to treat other people.  And they can be measured.  They can be measured in the way we see people treat other people, and of course, the Chinese government, with its institutionalized torture, abuse, harassment of journalists, bloggers, and other free speech advocates, endless transparent propaganda, victimization and other downright out and out lies have shown that their morals do not include treating people like human beings.  We have found out this week, the exact extent to which the Chinese government values the basic rights that, in most modern countries in the first quarter of the 21^st Century, we take for granted.  Western journalists have been openly threatened, investigations have been whitewashed, and censorship has tightened, all in the name of the Chinese Communist Party – the last bastion of rhetoric that last saw the light of day behind closed doors in 1950’s USSR.  When did you last hear a sentence that included “the masses”?  1962?  Khrushchev?  Trotsky?  Well, it was actually last week when Wen Jiao Bao made his speech to the NPC.

Chinese people have it easy.  They don’t really have to think that much.  They aren’t really taught to think that much, and anyone who has ridden any subway and has seen Chinese people bemused by the ticket machines, the thought of giving people the vote in China is a terrifying prospect.  When people offer some such pro-democracy comment thinly disguised as “power to the people”, I often find myself asking the question, “what people?  These assholes?”.  Chinese people are often the first to leap to their country’s defense, citing economic progress, healthcare, literacy, the rise in living standards, confused that they shouldn’t be angry at their country, since they have really only done things that their parents could dream about.  Angry is the wrong emotion.  Chinese people shouldn’t be angry about their country or their leadership.  The Chinese, like American people, shouldn’t hate their country – they should be embarrassed by it.

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China's Revolution Needs Supersizing

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="move along, nothing to protest about here"][/caption]

Chinese citizens were told to shout “We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness”, referencing rising food and housing prices, the overqualified and underpaid ant-tribe, and massive government corruption and cronyism that has dogged the Chinese government since its inception.

While the protests in Egypt, Libya and Bahrain were gathering momentum, I found myself hoping that the same wouldn’t happen in China.  If it did, I explain on Facebook, the government crackdown would make Gadhafi’s violent response look like a paintballing outing for extremely nervous insurance salesmen.  The choice of venues (KFC and McDonalds) neatly illustrates the pampered nature of the Angry Young Men of China – we can have a protest, but we really need to go somewhere where we can get some food later on, possibly with a the local neighborhood American diplomat.

Suffice to say that the Chinese didn’t really grasp the nettle and give an all-out protest on the same scale as their Egyptian and Libyan counterparts.   A number of factors conspired against them a) they publicized the whole thing on Twitter which is banned in China, b) the Chinese authorities are stupid, but they’re not too stupid not to use Twitter to keep tabs on troublemakers c) they used Google Maps to pinpoint exactly were the protests were being held.  It was, to borrow one of Hannibal Lecter’s lines, a fledging protestor’s first attempt at a transformation, and not that great a success.  That said, at least the members of one of the world’s largest standing armies had something to other than stand.

The authorities didn’t really do themselves any favors either.  Fearing massive negative publicity, they duly phoned up every reporter in the city and told them not to go anywhere near Wangfujing or Tiananmen Square without special permission - which is a little like telling a two year old not to press, under any circumstances, the big red button with “danger – do not press” written in yellow and red letters above it.  If anyone should be arrested for subverting state power, it’s the Chinese idiots who spread news to the people who didn’t even know there was news in the first place to be spread.  It’s also given officials, as the 9/11 terror attacks in American gave the American officials, more wiggle room to collect in one place all the troublemakers, and any excuse to tighten the rules is a good excuse.

While their tactics have been quite simple, they have been quite effective – no one can argue that spraying water from a street cleaning van is a more acceptable than an M1 tank rumbling down the Wang Fu Jing.  If the dissidents get the idea that the most they have to deal with is getting a little bit wet (which, admittedly for Chinese people is on the same level as contracting leprosy) every weekend, they may get that little bit bolder.  It’s a shame that the Chinese police didn’t deal with the foreign news media.  Nothing makes a western report moist with anticipation more than a protest in China, but nothing eats up column inches like reports of Chinese police beating the living daylights out of foreign reporters and illegally detaining those covering a protest in China.

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Fantastic Prizes to be Won!!

Taiwanese animators at the Apple Daily and NMA weighed in with their satirical short film “China Creates Peace Price to Rival Nobel” and “Li Xiao Bo: A Story of Hope and Struggle” both of which skewer the political miswranglings of China's finest diplomatic minds.





Not wanting to be outdone, the Chinese responded to pressure from, er, the Norwegians, by awarding a it's own citizens with prizes for outstanding achievement in the fields of harmony and peace.  The World Harmony Award, created by the World Harmony Foundation was awarded to none other than Chi Haotian, a Chinese general who had orchestrated the troops at Tian'anmen Square in 1989, encouraged Chinese people to fire on women and children on the battlefield (although what women and children are doing on the battlefield is anyone's guess), and drew up plans for a Chinese invasion and occupation of the USA:

"Our military battle preparation appears to aim at Taiwan, but in fact is aimed at the United States, and the preparation is far beyond the scope of attacking aircraft carriers or satellites. Marxism pointed out that violence is the midwife for the birth of the new society. Therefore war is the midwife for the birth of China's century."

Er.  Go China?

U.N. Undersecretary General for Economic and Social Affairs lent a certain weight to the award ceremony to the insane old man honorable CCP cadre, by gently handing it to him, rather than smashing him over his wrinkled old noggin with it and doing us all a favour by putting him out of our misery.  Needless to say, the UN's Human Rights High Commissioner, Navanethem Pillay, declined to attend the award ceremony for Liu Xiaobo in Oslo



Furthering the cause of peace in the troubled province of Taiwan was the aim of the Confucius Peace Prize, which was duly awarded to Lien Chan of the KMT - who promptly denied ever hearing of it, as was told to the Taipei Times:

“We’ve never heard of such an award and of course Mr Lien has no plans to accept it,” said Ting Yuan-chao (丁遠超), director and spokesman of Lien’s office.

The KMT yesterday also denied having any knowledge of the the award, but defended his contributions to cross-strait developments.

“The KMT is not aware of the news and it would be more appropriate to comment on the matter after we make sure there’s such an award and learn the details,” KMT Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said.

Since Chan wasn't sure if the award even existed, he didn't attend the award ceremony (described as "chaotic" and "hastily organised" by attendees) so the glass...thing was given to a young Chinese girl with ponytails instead, because, of course, Chinese girls "symbolize peace and future".



The whole pointless, posturing fiasco is best summed up by the inimitable James Fallows at The Atlantic:

South African officials eventually looked back with regret on the years in which they jailed Mandela; while racial inequalities are still with us in America, even Glenn Beck pays honor to Martin Luther King. Let's hope Liu and his family live to see the day when official China can look back with regret on its decisions at this time.

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