Foundinchina.com

News emerges today that Hong Kong based billionaire Carson Yeung, already a 29.9% stakeholder, is in the final stages of a planned takeover of English Premier League’s Birmingham City. Once in control one of his stated objectives is to help develop Chinese football:

“Over the past 10 years China has had its sports boosted, but there has been no development for football,” Yeung told British reporters when lodging the takeover bid.

“So I would like to make my humble contribution. In the future, when the team is stabilised, we will recruit Chinese players who have potential.

“My biggest wish is to bring the English Premier League club to China, promote English professionalism and football concepts to the Chinese, and to let the Chinese know how a English football team is managed.”

In a recent interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Vico Hui, chief executive of Grandtop International, Yeung’s investment vehicle which has launched the takeover attempt, made clear China would be a beneficiary.

“We will become the first Chinese owners of a club in the Premier League. Our business will be idolised. We will be bringing glory to the Chinese people,” he told the newspaper.

http://www.inventions.org/

At a time when both Koreas and Japan have successfully qualified for next year’s World Cup, China’s football failings are once again under the spotlight. China could certainly do with Yeung’s patriotic assistance given its staggering underachievement in this particular sporting field.

To quote again from the original report: “In the future, when the team is stabilised, we will recruit Chinese players who have potential”. Yeung clearly expects the China connection to make Birmingham City flavour of the month with the Chinese audience, and intends to cement this popularity with an infusion of Chinese talent. But here’s the problem: Given a cultural penchant for authoritarian control – and the stated intent of nurturing Chinese talent before a multitudinous and expectant audience – what are the chances of a Chinese boss keeping his nose out of the manager’s team selection?

And does Yeung have any idea what happens to football clubs that fall under dictatorial control? I guess it rather depends on what sort of boss Yeung is, but if he shares the megalomaniac tendencies exhibited in this cautionary tale, he’s going to have less chance of success in the EPL than China do in South Africa 2010.

http://www.straitstimes.com/

From the BBC comes this report. This kind of ‘allegiance to the Motherland’ has been going on for years in China and is the fertile breeding ground of the next generation of fenqing. It’s also dangerously close to the cultivation of a mindset that denounces those that are not fervent enough in their expressions of love for all things CCP China.

Imagine the shame of having a child accused of not loving China above all else. Re-ducation would be the only answer.

Sound familiar?

Great Leader

Kim Il Sung, otherwise known as ‘Great Leader‘ or ’Eternal President’, perfected autocratic rule after North Korea’s 1948 birth, taking the idea of a personality cult and putting it on a medication of amphetamines.

According to Wikipedia:

Often North Korean sources place him as an “almighty spirit”, that “created the world“, and that he was born and died in human form, almost in a similar manner to Jesus Christ.

That’s a pretty hard act to follow. But when your gene pool contains such providential characteristics it’s hardly surprising that your seed produces very special fruit. Thus, having thrust his loins in majestic union in the summer of 1941, a Dear Leader was only nine months away.

Dear Leader

Learning a trick or two from the old man, Kim Jong Il has stretched hero worship well beyond the boundaries of humorous hyperbole. For example, the Dear Leader’s modesty is the only reason why you may not be aware that he is in fact the greatest golfer on the planet, having completed Pyongyang Golf Club’s Par 72 course in only 34 shots in 1994:

Resident professional, Park Young Man, together with Kim’s 17 armed bodyguards, can attest that Kim played the full eighteen, all holed out, off the back tees on a crisp autumn morning in October 1994. “He is an excellent golfer,” said Mr. Park, noting that “Dear Leader Comrade General Kim Jong-Il, whom I respect from the bottom of my heart, scored two on this hole.” But there was even better to come, as Kim’s amazing round included a world record five holes in one!

Sadly, Dear Leader is about to shuffle off his immortal golfing coil in readiness for the next reincarnation; please enter, son and demigod-apparent, Kim Jong Un.

A friend alerted me recently to the this site, where well-wishers were invited to voice their support – in no more than 64 words - for one of the world’s most inspirational figures for her 64th birthday. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose 19th year of on-off incarceration was recently extended through a sham trial, had, at time of writing, received in excess of 11 000 messages. These included contributions from Bono, Yoko Ono, George Clooney, many world leaders, MP’s, and fellow Nobel Laureates.

Despite attempts by Burma’s junta to bring down the site, words of solidarity continue to pour in; from Morocco to Sweden, Malaysia to Finland, Indonesia to Mexico, Australia to India, Britain to Bhutan – and on and on - words of support have arrived from all walks of life and nearly every corner of the globe.

Nearly.

I haven’t read all 11 000 messages, but among the numerous pages I flicked through not one response emanated from China. Not a single word of encouragement or vestige of hope for Aung San Suu Kyi and her people; and not one shred of evidence that Burma’s powerful neighbour has the will, the integrity, or the moral responsibility to change or educate its people about the suffering going on in her own backyard.

Why am I not surprised?