Sunday, January 23, 2011

Smart Diplomacy

During the Chinese state visit, a Chinese musician played a popular anti-American song in the White House (tip to Mad Minerva):

“My Motherland” having been played at the White House will be seen as a propaganda triumph in China.

“In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia who had in China been a doctor in the Chinese military. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating.”

That smarts, all right. Sigh.

UPDATE: Instapundit notes a Times article saying that the song choice was unintentional and so there was no official significance to the song choice. That may be. But the point is our diplomats didn't notice the significance--and gave nationalists in China cheap points for belling the cat.