Almost embarrassed to be English after reading that!

...and you said it was a humour column?!

a humor column? of course! we're all in stitches now laughing at the english.

I am shocked -- shocked -- to find racist, reactionary, unfunny drivel in the pages of the Telegraph.

Wow. I know the Telegraph is not the beeb, but could this get Richard Spencer GFWed?

Come on, this looks much more like what Bush would say. Hu is much more talented than that.

The sad thing is that a smart writer and observer of China COULD make a mock Hu Jintao blog -- complete with such post titles as "How I improved social harmony today" and "Why can't the Jiang Zemin clique just go away?" -- but Goodley totally ruins the idea with that garbage.

Not sure if the climate of race is different in England, but could anyone imagine the fall out to an American newspaper publishing a piece mocking Africans or African-Americans using equivalent 'steppin' fetchit' language from 19th-century racist literature?

Why is it okay to mock Chinese this way using pidgin English?

@Jeremiah: Because African Americans are a historically disadvantaged underclass who deserve our compassion and understanding. The Chinese, as any fool can see, are evil.

"Comlades"? I think Matthew Stinson has it right. Chinese political language is already completely ridiculous. It certainly doesn't need broadly offensive Charlie Chan-style stereotyping layered on top. But its worst and most unforgivable crime is that it just ain't funny. If you're going to stoop to offense, at least get a laugh on the way.

On a recent trip back to the UK, I was surprised not just by the number of China stories, but their tone. Even the BBC's main TV news program carried a report on the Party Congress which opened with the words 'You may not believe it, but this is a party member showing excitement' . Cue more pictures of men yawning. I'm looking forward to CCTV doing the house of lords.

"They hate the Chinese Commies, but they love Their Money".

That quote, from perceptive Blog elsewhere, explains a LOT of China-bashing. Sad day for desperate bashers!

racism against chinese is more accepted in UK mainstream than racism against, say, blacks. I guess it is because the Chinese minority has always been a much quieter minority than others - very few Chinese faces in the media/news/sports/entertainment. This kind of 'humour' is quite typical.
For an alternative view, see Alan Partridge's debate with self over whether the word 'chinky' is racist. "It's both a people and a food.."

about as funny and incisive as mickey rooney's japanese landlord in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S...

"deregates"? That's Gold.

Besides, this is so utterly ignorant. If anyone has noticed, Beijingren spam r all the damn time, and Sichuanren mix n with l. If you want to do a fake accent, get the fake accent right, Chinese are not Japanese. But that wouldn't be funny, would it? :/

Re 'Not sure if the climate of race is different in England...'

Sorry if this is stating the obvious, but although the UK and its media are often indefensible I feel they should be defended here by pointing out 1) the Daily Telegraph is read by a tiny minority of the UK's population 2) it's a hard right newspaper which panders to the racial prejudices of a relatively prosperous and homogeneous (i.e. racially ignorant) white upper middle class and 3) with a few honourable exceptions the right in the UK has for some time been pathetically unsuccessful at satirical writing.

I'd like to point point out that whatever the reputation of the Telegraph and the politics of its editors, and the awful humor on display in the piece linked above, the newspaper's China coverage is usually pretty balanced, thanks in part to Beijing correspondent Richard Spencer.

I saw this mock-blog posted as a link on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree.

It did seem pretty strange to me and, as there was an email address at the bottom of the page, I sent a message to the author giving him a link to the LP thread and the opportunity to explain.

His reply was pretty polite considering what had been written.

---
Thank you for your email,

I take the points about my poor interpretation of the accent - although I did do some research and the Wikipedia page on Chinese pronunciation of English framed my piece. Undoubtedly, however, a bunch of ex-pats in China would know better than me or that page. I think that side of the criticism is more than fair. As for the other main accusation, well, I've never understood why writing a Chinese accent semi-phonetically is racist, but if I do the same for a character from the east end of London, Ireland or even Poland (as I have before) it's not.

Anyway - thank you again for pointing me to the site. It was instructive.

Best,
SG
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Here's the Thorn Tree forum link if your dying to read similar comments:

http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/messagepost.cfm?postaction=reply&catid=84&threadid=1492387&messid=13201988&STARTPAGE=1&parentid=0&from=1&showall=true

Speaking as a former Daily Telegraph correspondent in China, this is really embarrassing.

Sorry, can't resist this... Graham Earnshaw's embarrassment is much appreciated, and I'm sure he's a good guy, but ouch! that's a nasty dangling modifier in that sentence. I thought Telegraph journalists were at least grammatically correct, if not politically so ;)

It seems Richard Spencer is GFWed (at least his blog) which is a real shame cos whatever failings the Telelgraph has he is an excellent China correspondant.