What China Is Thinking

“What—you want a piece of me, punk?”: In China, if you kill a panda bear—
even by accident—you will be executed. So DO NOT fuck with the pandas. 

  

We all have a sense of what the Chinese are thinking about the rest of the world—but we don’t really know. Of course, they tell us what they’re thinking—but that’s as polite and meaningless as when you ask your dinner guests how’s the food: They might look green around the gills, but they’ll invariably say, “Why, it’s wonderful—thank you!” 

  
So getting an actual document which spells out in black-and-white what the Chinese are really thinking is an eye-opener: Not so much for what it says—which on the whole is predictable—but for the emphasis it has. 
  
Recently, I got handed a copy of the Chinese economic evaluation of Japan, the European Union and the United States. The document was written for and by Chinese government officials who will be attending the G-20 summit in Seoul next November. This document will be the basis for their discussions with their trading partners, and outlines China’s concerns about those countries. 
  

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