Blog Post #1 - The Economist

The article I read for this week is an opinion piece from The Economist. The title of the article is: The People's Republic at 60: China's place in the world.

The author begins by commenting on the military parade at the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China juxtaposed against the "peaceful rise" to power that the Chinese government claims.

The article continues, explaining that China's position on the world stage has never been greater. However, Chinese officials "habitually complain that the world has not accepted China's emergence," and that Americans and others are trapped in a "cold-war mentality".

Following this, the author writes about China's foreign policy and how it acts on the world stage. The author gives examples of both positive and negative actions China takes in its foreign policy.

The author concludes that China's show of force during the anniversary parade was not for the world, but for it's own people. "With no popular mandate, the government's legitimacy relies on its record in making China richer and stronger."

While this article is an opinion piece, I felt that it had several problems that made, what I thought would be a solid piece of journalism, a mediocre one.

The first thing that struck me is how the author switches the tone throughout the article. The author starts out with a confrontational tone, "For a country that pride's itself on its 'peaceful rise', it was an odd way to celebrate a birthday...What message was it meant to convey to an awestruck world?" A few paragraphs later, the author writes "None of this is to deny that China is playing a constructive-and vital-role on a number of international fronts," changing the tone. Finally, the article ends with another tone, "For those worried about where China's rise might lead, that the government is so insecure is not a comforting thought." The article starts by condemning the Chinese government, switches to praising it and then finally ends by pitying it. I find the changes in tone makes the article hard to follow.

Another issue in the article is language use. While, I know it is an opinion piece, the word usage of the author seems pretentious in places. For example, "lament these ascendant peaceniks" or "And those prey to it will have been reassured". In another paragraph, the author writes "aimed at getting it to ditch its nukes". Again, this is an opinion piece, however, the language the author uses here seems too informal.

One more issue I have with this article is this sentence: "One is the knee-jerk resort to hysterical propaganda and reprisals when a foreign country displeases it by critising its appalling treatment of political dissidents, or accepts a visit from the Dalai Lama or other objects of the Communist Party's venom." I believe the issue in this sentence is that the series presented is not in a parallel grammatical form, making it hard to read. This sentence typifies the problems of the article and makes it a less than effective piece of journalism.