My parents are worn out after work, their minds easy prey for evening television. We watch the news program from China: Always something good. A new park opening for children, a new trade deal made with Europe... everything is getting better and better, they keep saying.
We know that things in China are not going well at all, that people are unemployed and homeless, that crime is soaring and the economy unstable to say the least... but we have to admit that we find a strange solace in the chinese news, as one cannot elsewhere. I think of the thousands of unemployed workers in China, watching the same program. How do they see her, the woman commentator with her hair done up, in a tasteful blue suit and a mona lisa smile... these fictions every evening which have less and less to do with their wretched daily lives...
The "news" from China mocks us, there is something singleminded and insulting about it, even as it proclaims that the future is looking brighter and brighter. And we learn to ignore the mocking undertone, to surrender ourselves, even if for a moment, to that perfect fantasy world...