I know I am late on this one – I was on the West coast talking to people about China – but I’d like to inaugurate a new award. Let’s call it the Fu Manchu Award for the Most Cringe-worthy Comment on China. The first winner is Sharon Stone for her comments on China’s quake.

Stone said, referring to the quakes and China’s policies in Tibet, etc.: "I thought, 'Is that karma?' When you are not nice, bad things happen to you."

Send in your nominations for the Fu Manchu Award in coming weeks. If there’s enough interest, we’ll do one a week.

I’ll be posting another comment soon on the earthquake and other issues.

This book review of mine appeared in the Post a week ago. Lustgarten’s book is worthy not so much for his stuff on Tibet but for the access he got to the engineers who built the railroad. That made it, for me at least, enlightening.

CHINA'S GREAT TRAIN
Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign To Remake Tibet
By Abrahm Lustgarten
Times. 305 pp. $26

WHAT DOES CHINA THINK?
By Mark Leonard
PublicAffairs. 164 pp. $22.95

China is ruled by geeks. For the last 30 years, engineers have dominated China's political system. After revolutionaries such as Deng Xiaoping kicked off its economic reforms, the techies took over and built China into the untested superpower it is today.

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Talk about peace, love and understanding! Reuters today is quoting a Nationalist Party spokeswoman from Taiwan as saying China has vowed to cut the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan.

I said in an earlier post that the stage has been set for a luv-fest between Beijing and Taipei.

Today's report concerns a meeting last week between Nationalist Party Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung and senior leaders in Beijing, including President Hu Jintao. Wu asked about the missiles and was told China would stop deploying them ahead of a gradual reduction. "It was a friendly reaction," spokeswoman Ms. Chen Shu-jung told Reuters. China did not set a timeline or estimate how many missiles might be removed, she said.

If this report turns out to be true, it would be really major. Not just an olive branch, heck, a whole tree, presented by China's leaders to the new president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, who took office on May 20. Ma has also set his sights on a peace accord, as well as a boost in trade ties. Get ready for negotiations to begin on direct air travel. Shanghai to Taipei, less than a two-hour flight. Good for biznez!

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On Aug. 30, 1976, the New York Times ran a short piece on page 25 quoting a front page story in the People’s Daily. “Peking Praises Father Who Let Children Die,” read the Times' headline.
The mouthpiece of the Communist Party had written about a father of two who survived the Tangshan earthquake (which left 200,000 dead). After the disaster, he discovered his 16-year-old son and 13-year-daughter alive. “Quick, Daddy, come and save us,” the story quoted his children as saying. But Dad had other plans.

Hearing the voice of the local Communist Party secretary, Dad went and saved him first. Meanwhile, his kids died. “But he felt neither remorse nor grief,” the People’s Daily concluded. “In the interests of the people of the neighborhood and in the majority interest, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his own children.”

There’s been a lot written about how the Sichuan earthquake has changed and is changing China. A freer media; NGOs that can finally be NGOs; real charities; a commitment to battling the corruption that resulted in the pancaking of dozens of schools -- and the deaths of thousands of kids; a more responsive state. All of these hopes have risen from the tragedy.

Across many fronts, we’re now seeing backsliding. The authorities are reining in the press and the NGOs. Police are trying to stop demonstrations by parents who’ve lost their children. That’s in character. There’s a spasmodic nature to Chinese history. It moves three steps forward and five steps back. Still, in the short run, it may turn out, for the wrong reasons, that this will be one of the best things that ever happened for the Chinese Communist Party. It’s bought a huge amount of legitimacy, not so much with the rescue efforts, but for allowing all this to flourish – at least for a little while.

But the thing that seems to me the most significant is what this disaster is showing us about changes being wrought inside that murkiest of arenas -- China’s soul. People are competing to see who can help out the victims. Students lined up by the hundreds to give blood. On the web, fat cats are being shamed into donating more and forced into apologizing if their charity pales in comparison to the gifts of other bigwigs. “How much have you given?” has become a new greeting, replacing “Have you played golf?” or “Been to Tibet” of just a few months ago.

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There’s been a lot written on how the 2008 Olympics are going to be China’s Olympics – and that China will use its prospective mother lode of gold medals to bolster national pride. Well, more than national pride, China’s collective manhood. But truth be told, most Chinese don’t give two fen about the Olympics. To be sure, they love the collective idea about the games, and China’s politicos will savor the international “face” that will accrue to the Mandarins in Beijing; but crew? or equestrian events? or baseball? These sports have no fans in China. None. Zilch. Ling

No, if you really want a sport that’s connected intimately to China’s manhood, its sense of itself as a successful nation, it’s soccer. Yes, futbol. Or zuqiu in Chinese, zu for foot and qiu for ball. Forget about ping pong or wu shu or the dragon boat race. Soccer is the national sports obsession of the Chinese.

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