Chinese newspaper calls for sanctions against Clive Palmer's businesses and bar him from the countryBEIJING Clive Palmer’s live television tirade could prove the last straw for worsening Australia-China relations, a Chinese state-owned newspaper has claimed, in an editorial that also calls for the country to impose sanctions against the Palmer United Party leader's businesses, and bar him from entering the country.
“China must let those prancing provocateurs know how much of a price they pay when they deliberately rile us,” The Global Times said, in an editorial published in both its Chinese and English editions on Wednesday.
“China cannot let him off, or show petty kindness just because the Australian government has condemned him. China must be aware that Palmer's rampant rascality serves as a symbol that Australian society has an unfriendly attitude toward China.”...I don't know much about Australian politics at the moment (except that Tony Abbot is a miserable bastard and "we stopped the boats" is the shittiest asylum policy in the world). I'm guessing too that Clive Palmer is not ultimately in Australia's best interest. (We seem to have barely concealed White Australians doing White Australia things for a White Australia future every few political cycles, and we need a new word - it'd be better if redneck, yokel, and Australian didn't end up being synonymous.) Howevaire... I'm reminded yet again that when nations speak, they oh so often are not describing as they claim to be the outside world, but instead are describing their own shadows. So often, their rhetoric is bizarrely
unfocused on the target, and so often drawn instead from some realm of "this is not us, truly we are not these rascals we speak of". they talk about their own worst selves.
What Palmer actually said was neither provocative nor rascally. It was a direct and disdainful maligning of the race, or whoever he thought he was referring to when he said "the Chinese". He says he was talking about the governing body of that country. You can witness his actual on-screen rant in the link above.
Anyway, he's a fat old racist fuck with more power and money than is suitable, but how about if he was calling a rascal a rascal. He said "the Chinese" are mongrels because they shoot their own people. China, by the way, presently regards itself as too big and too indispensible to the global economy to have anymore to show "petty kindness" to the rest of the world, so I'm guessing we'll be seeing more of this soft-not-soft power in the future.