Unless I’ve missed something and he’s acquired a new nickname (which is quite a good one for a cinephile who writes about urban stuff), that’s Barista.

partly, this seems fuelled/facilitated by the disconnect between Western reporting of China in the West and reporting of China in China, which appears to create a sort of victim/tribal mentality. See eg reporting of the paralympian torch-bearer in Paris.

A further ingredient is that great capacity of humans to selectively auto-reinforce. Think any larva rodent writing about Australia under Howard, or any RWDB writing about progress in Iraq or climate change, or for that matter the way in which people can give credibility to Al Gore.

The Chinese are very different from us, just like us

Others have observed that PRC students in Australia tend to be from well-connected families with strong Party ties and are unlikely to be boat-rockers.

You’d kind of hope so because the alternative explanation is that the broadening effects of a university education not to mention the development of critical faculty is greatly over-estimated. Or else they’re computer studies majors….

I think there are a number of perfectly plausible and reasonable targets to point speculation about who organised the protests that the Chinese government. It’s not that I don’t think they were organised; nothing happens without organisation. Kev clearly disagrees. I shall stand my ground and continue to call Kev’s decision paranoia.

That Kev believes it is a conspiracy theory - he refers to it as such in his comments - indicates that maybe kinda he almost agrees that it is a bit paranoid. I really do mean it in the most joshing, post-Fox-Mulder way. YMMV.

Ask any cherry tree.

Chairman Mao is like Jesus to us … He’s no more a killer than George Washington or George W Bush

Jesus H Christ, these morons should start learning more about their country’s history … Mousy Dung is one of history’s worst serial killers.

And as I’ve related on Kev’s blog and on my own open forum on Catallaxy, in the week preceding these demonstrations I actually received two mysterious phone calls in Mandarin from a total stranger who when I informed I couldn’t understand Mandarin (which I can’t, though I know roughly how it sounds like relative to Cantonese or Hokkien) hung up. Now this may be nothing or it may be consistent with Kev’s theory but I have to admit after those 2 calls I came up with exactly the same theory as Kev, more so given that I am on the ‘telemarketers keep away’ Do Not Call list - of course for all I know it *could* just be a dodgy telemarketer ignoring that and targetting the Asian market.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4497105a6009.html

It should go into overdrive when he reads this:

http://portia.gnn.tv/blogs/15401/mob_of_chinese_students_protest_student_newspaper_cover

Kev is definitely oversimplifying China and the Chinese, see eg this post and the (record length for that blog but still interesting) comments thread.

Kev is, however, right about the taxes on mixed drinks. I don’t recall girls and adolescents getting suddenly drunker when mixed drinks came on stage - the girls of my adolescence coped just fine on Passion Pop; Spumante and Midori, thank you, not to mention whatever else was going when that ran out!!

You and he both use terms like “looking” and “seemed” and put together a shadowy conspiracy. Sure, you may well be right but it will be accidental.

I did see reports that the Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai (who had been quite vocal about torch security *rolls eyes* in the lead up to the local leg) had been actively “encouraging” Chinese students to attend the relay (and it seemed there was a sizeable crowd of predominantly Chinese students of the non-Australian kind who were there, if I go by the news coverage, many of whom didn’t even seem to speak English well. So not your third generation Chinese Aussie uni student.)

The tactics too, amongst these particular group of China supporters, just didn’t go looking like your happy go lucky Olympic supporters proud of their country. Too stage managed.

Wouldn’t be surprises if Junsai had a finger in there somewhere.