Ordinary Gweilo

One of my favourite features of the SCMP used to be the idiotic letters they often published. Sometimes just plain barmy (Simon Patkin), sometimes meaningless drivel. Nowadays they seem to have cut back on this, and I have to rely on blogs for that kind of thing. Or the letters column of China Daily.

This letter, from someone in Singapore about ‘1 Country, 2 Systems’ is a gem. Muddled thinking and insults for anyone who doesn’t agree with the official party line.

Szeto Wah in his mid-seventies is a Christian, probably indoctrinated about the evils of communism by the Church, and hence a distaste and dislike for PRC. […] What is so reprehensible about China putting Martin Lee and Szeto Wah under sedition law or treason? Would it not be that Singapore is anti-communist and China is communist?

Maybe it would not. It never ceases to amaze me that the socialist republic of Singapore is perceived as being a bastion of free enterprise when the government controls so much of the economy. At least China is moving in the opposite direction by selling off many state-owned firms.

It’s an interesting argument that the democrats are against China because they fear communism. Does that imply that China has plans to introduce communism in Hong Kong? As I said, muddled thinking.

Wait – there’s more stupidity:

Finally, it was easy to drum up ‘10%’ of the populace to come out if the population was some six million. Out of the ‘500,000’ how many were the curious and unintentional shoppers and people going about their normal daily activities.

Making comments like that got Tsang Yok-sing (the ex-leader of the DAB) in hot water. Hundreds of thousands of people queued up for several hours just to join the march, and when even the police say that there were 500,000 people taking part the chances are that there actually substantially more than that. Anyone who thinks that the people gave up a public holiday to walk (or stand) in the hot sun for several hours just for fun is very obviously deluding themselves. Or perhaps that’s what China Daily is all about.