Sad for China.

I read a news report today to the effect that the Chinese government is enacting a law in Hong Kong forbidding the residents showing disrespect to the Chinese national anthem. The penalty for so doing is set at a maximum of three years imprisonment.

Why are they doing this? Why, when you consider the beauty, depth and longevity of Chinese culture, does the government insist on demeaning their country this way. Why, when you take into account the Chinese reputation for the principles of balance and progressive wisdom, does the government choose to paint their country as a mean-minded, repressive, and therefore relatively backward state?

This is something you would expect to be espoused by a blustering little schoolyard bully like Trump, not the government of one of the world’s traditionally great civilisations. So does this mean the world now has another Trump on its hands – another Erdogan, Duterte or al-Assad? As a confessed Sinophile, I find that very disappointing.