Good one. Fooled me.

Having taken two Mandarin classes, to become "pitch-perfect" in a tonal language is quite an achievement. Is Harper even pitch-perfect in french? As far as the rest of the note, it looks like some Communist official wrote it.

Bu hao!

To argue that China doesn't have a good government is plainly ludicrous. You try taking a nation of more than a billion people from abject deprivation and misery to a major world power in one generation, and see how well you perform at the task. Your stance appears emotional, not rational or realistic.

FWIW, I also avoid buying Chinese whenever possible.

The media is doing its job as it must.

I heard a tantalizing rumour that Harper has big plans for the China visit. Harper will be part of a gala event that will simultaneously promote the 2010 Shanghai Expo and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics (a symbolic ‘passing of the torch’ from Summer to Winter Olympics).

The event will feature glittery performances by Chinese musicians, dancers and acrobats, and one of the major themes will be Chinese/Canadian friendship and cultural understanding. It will be televised nationally, with a projected TV audience in the hundreds of millions.

One of the most famous foreigners in China, Dashan (a.k.a. Mark Rowswell) is a master of the ancient Chinese comedic art of xiangsheng. He speaks perfect Mandarin and often acts as a “cultural ambassador”. Earlier this year, Harper appointed him Canada’s Commissioner General for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Dashan will play a starring role in the gala.

Dashan wrote a comedy routine which will be performed by him and four Chinese artists. The routine is full of puns and wordplay, joking about hockey and other Canadian winter sports that seem exotic to most Chinese. Toward the end of the performance, Harper walk onstage to thunderous applause and will deliver the punchline in pitch-perfect Mandarin. Following this surprise, Harper will deliver a short speech of goodwill to China in French and English, which will be translated by Dashan. Norman Bethune and others will be honoured.

This performance should go a long way toward mending bridges and boosting Canada’s profile in China. Needless to say, it will be Harper’s largest audience ever, by a factor of at least ten (a nice follow-up to his “piano man” routine).

Thus Roma > Rome, Par-EE > PAIR-iss, YAY-soos > JEE-zuz, Nietzsche > NEE-chee, Ca-MUE > KA-moo, etc. etc. etc.

The very name for India (in English) is derived from Sanskrit via Persian via Greek via Latin.

Finally, the State Council is not a bad government. As national governments go, it's actually pretty good, and certainly better than the majority in the world. Asserting that the Chinese government 'don't give a damn about the health and welfare of their own people', is simply preposterous, and libel. Some people should do some research before they take the leash off their typing fingers. Looking up a definition of 'totalitarian state' would be a good place to start.

First of all, sanctions don't work, and have never worked in 2,000 years. Anyone can smuggle anything in and out of a country for enough money. Only the poor, who can't afford the black market premium, suffer under sanctions. The middle class and upper class never even notice sanctions were ever imposed. The increase in black market cost is merely one more type of inflation.

On your point about collusion, there have been reports and various investigations regarding Gujarat and the riots led by the Congress government. If there was indeed collusion, the Congress government would have been the first to charge Modi for these alleged crimes. However, the untold story is in fact that the riots were the result of the actions of radical Islamists.

Regarding the blacklisting of Modi, ask yourself if it is justifiable to blacklist the Chief Minister of a state within a democratic India, with rule of law, while we, in the Western world, especially Canada has never blacklisted any of the leaders from China who actively ordered the Tianamen Square massacre, the torture of Falun Gong practitioners and the suppression of Tibetans (which continues today).

The changing of the names was an act of national pride by the government of India to change the names from their anglocized names (i.e. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Bangalore). Indians wanted to restore the names that the British had changed. At the very least, my recommendation is that Mr. Wells, the PM and his staff should respect the current way in which those cities are officially addressed in the 21st century. It would be proper protocol, as it would be not to refer to Beijing as Peking.

Furthermore, yours is but one side of the story. The other side is that Narendra Modi's administration and the state police forces actively stood by while Hindu retribution mobs went after Gujarati Muslims. There were central government enquiries into the facts to see if their was indeed collusion that resulted in many deaths. Now Modi has mostly rehabiliated his image such that he has an excellent chance of becoming the Leader of the Opposion and BJP party in the central government.

The blacklisting was probably justified, but the time has come to remove them from the list.

what damage????

If you read Chinese-language media, Stephen Harper is widely regarded in China as being sympathetic to Chinese terrorists & criminals. Google Huseyincan Celil or Lai Changxing. He was also widely regarded as being the only world leader who made Bush look smart and worldly.

Yes, Harper loves to be in the coattails of Obama! Canada has become truly subservient to its largest trading partner but will not get an exemption from Congress's very popular Buy America decree!! Harper's government intervened in the Democratic leadership race because it fear Obama's protectionism. Obama has not forgotten that dirty little trick carried out by the PMO office and Canada's Ambassador in the US.

If nothing else, Harper can get photo-ops with Obama again….cause he'll be there too.

Look there are loits of examples on either side, good and bad. Liberals released the red book in 1992 to counter that they were yesterdays man with no ideas, the cons in 1984 had to produce policies to get attention, the cons in 2006 (?) did the same thing, some before some after the writ.

Taking the position that you are going to bering the govenrment down with either no demonstartion of your own plan, or a a convincing demonstration of governing party incompetence is folly. This isnt partisan, its pretty fundamental strategy. But these mistakes get made by all sides and all leaders….Haprer made his in 2005. day got totally whipsawed by Chretien in what 1998?. Happens to all of them.

The Liberals need to ask why the last two OLO's have been so tone deaf to electoral reality?