International Law

As An Expat in China, I?m Offended

By Stan

This sucks balls in a number of ways:

Barack Obama’s half-brother has been helping to promote cheap Chinese exports in a low-profile business career while the Democratic senator has been winning worldwide fame in his race for the White House.

He has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid public attention and his family links remain unknown to most of his acquaintances in Shenzhen, a border boomtown in southern China where he has lived since 2002.

First, I always hate it when they bother family members of candidates. The press rationalizes all of this by saying that the public deserves to know the background of the candidates. No one seems to care about the privacy of these people who are just trying to make a living.

Second, having a brother who is a China export consultant is automatically seen as a "potential liability". So much for my political career, I guess.

The Times headline is lovely: "Barack Obama’s half brother pushes Chinese imports on U.S." Egad. "Pushes" exports on U.S.? Sounds like a drug dealer or something, not a guy with an MBA and a consulting business. The article also throws in the modifier "cheap" when referring to the kinds of products he "pushes". That’s nice.

Third, also entertaining is the way that Shenzhen is characterized, although you can’t exactly call it inaccurate:

Friends say he has a long-term Chinese girlfriend in her 20s from Henan, a poor landlocked province that sends millions of migrants to the coastal cities.He lives in Nanshan, a brash new district of high-rises and streets teeming after dark with young migrants eating spicy street food and cramming into bars, karaoke joints and massage parlours.

I’m surprised they didn’t say: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Oh yeah, I forgot, that’s Zhuhai.

I don’t know, you put all this together and it doesn’t sound all that flattering. Why does the Times hate China expats so much?

Full post as published by China Hearsay on July 29, 2008 (boomark / email).