By BIELE NINNEI
National Party Congress Correspondent

The boys enjoy a quick ‘Reservoir Dogs’ moment, before mirthlessly making their way to the Great Hall of the People, there to meet death with honor

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – In what many will remember as the clear highlight of a weeklong political rollercoaster, all nine members of China’s outgoing Politburo Standing Committee this morning committed ritual suicide onstage, in front of 4,000 delegates and foreign media at the 18^th National Party Congress.

Beginning the action at precisely 9.03am, state security chief Zhou Yongkang stepped forward from the phalanx of dark-suited, indistinguishable politicians, muttered a few words of gruff apology and plunged a carbon steel-alloy yitianjian blade deep into his abdomen, jerking it upwards and moving the blade from left to right, in a sheer slicing motion of textbook seppuku.

“It was an extremely clean kill,” CCTV presenter Yang Rui reported solemnly as, behind him, Central Committee Discipline Inspection Secretary He Guoqiang moved confidently to the podium at the Great Hall of the People, drew forward a curved, singled-edged traditional dao sword and drew it across his throat in a swift but deep slash that severed his jugular and sent thick gouts of arterial blood jetting over grateful delegates, sitting open-mouthed and adoring in the front row.

Long-time China-watchers noted approvingly that, as per Communist tradition, the elderly politicians removed themselves from this mortal coil in the exact order of their rank hypocrisy.

However, the 86-minute-long ceremony of elaborately staged self-slaughter was not without its hitches.

President Hu Jintao had to fire several hollow-point bullets from a customized pearl-handled SR1911 Ruger .45 automatic pistol into his skull before finally slumping to the ground, where his body continued to twitch and inexplicably shower sparks onto the immaculate red carpet for a full two minutes.

And much-loved Premier “Grandpa” Wen Jiabao, whose family is believed to have salted away well over $2 billion during the course of his benevolent leadership, had to be pushed and cajoled onto the stage, before finally agreeing to ram an ancient guan dao spear deep into his bowels and falling to his knees with a pained gasp of surprise and regret.

Analysts agreed that the gory but honorable succession of hara-kiri marked the indisputable high point of this Politburo’s 10-year history and represented an act of supreme patriotism for which they may possibly even be remembered.

However, others warned that the surprise suicides could cast a slight pall over the following day’s next Standing Committee announcement, especially as some of them are now dead by their own hand.

“The pressure is certainly on now for tomorrow’s incoming seven-man Politburo committee to top this spectacular act of self-sacrifice for the motherland,” intoned CCTV’s Yang to the camera. “My most dramatic guess is a true November Surprise: some kind of vague promise for mild economic reform at the municipal level.”

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By RONG REN
Politics Correspondent

Hu: wanted to pull an Obama, ended up doing a Hu

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – An explosive 15-minute speech at the 18^th National Party Congress by President Hu Jintao, laying out an explicit vision of reform in soaring rhetoric, had to be abruptly cancelled after Hu left it in his car.

Unable to find the lost notes, Hu was forced to substitute his potentially seismic remarks with a one-and-a-half-hour work report, sources say.

A precise timetable of legal, political and economic change, expressed in words of near-lyrical inspirational prose, was instead replaced by a rambling list of achievements laid out in bland officialese, while a blistering critique of the culture of corruption and materialism that has become endemic in all levels of government had to be swapped out for a 25-minute explanation of Jiang Zemin Theory.

“Hu was pretty disappointed, as he had hoped to make substantive reform his key political legacy and thus secure his place in China’s history, instead of simply being remembered as yet another heartless technocrat in a business suit and a bad hair-job,” his personal assistant, Lin Tao, explained. “Unfortunately, he left the damn speech in his limo. What can you do?”

Lin said it wasn’t all bad news for the outgoing President, however.

“Luckily, we don’t think anybody realized, except maybe Jiang Zemin, and the whole thing passed off without a hitch,” said Lin. “OK, China may have missed the opportunity to reform itself but the important thing is, no one lost face.”

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By FEI ZHOU
Culture Correspondent

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir wore a traditional Stetson during his national delegation’s marathon line-dancing routine

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – China has surprised aid agencies by announcing plans to restrict all further overseas aid only to countries displaying both “the ability and the willingness to sing and dance.”

The landmark policy shift was made by China’s State Council Wednesday. In the past, China has generally restricted its development aid to countries with rich natural resources.

However, with oil, diamonds and uranium now depleted in many regions, China has begun to look towards other commodities prized by its plutocratic leadership as a potential bargaining tool for impoverished nations.

“The richest untapped resources of Africa and South America, in particular, are the joyous, carefree dances of their amusing, fruit-hatted populations,” ran the official statement. “It is this cultural wealth which our nation would most like to develop and refine.”

The policy shift – dubbed ‘Rhythm for Resources’ – would explain the behavior of South Sudanese leader Salva Kiir at a recent summit with President Hu Jintao.

Salva led his delegation in a display of traditional Sudanese line dancing which the Chinese president applauded as “show-stoppingly quaint.”

The highly stylized routine, set to a bongo-based rehash of Dolly Parton classic Nine to Five, allegedly clinched a number of lucrative contracts, allowing China exclusive access to South Sudan’s oil wealth in return for an unspecified sum of cash.

The move comes as the country grows increasingly bored of the stale musical numbers regularly performed by the country’s 52 officially recognized “lesser ethnicities.”

As part of the country’s move to promote its soft power, while curtailing ‘undesirable’ foreign elements, the Ministry of Culture has invited the submissions of new, differently coloured minority peoples.

A special inspection committee has been assigned to remove sexually-suggestive dance moves, while setting traditional folk dances from around the world to a state-approved traditional instrument – the Yamaha PSR-19 synthesizer.

“We must move with the times,” Hao observed, during the nine-hour press conference. “Why not groove with the times?”

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By XIAO NIAO
Rumors Correspondent

You have the full transcript of Wen Jiabao discussing holiday plans? Just leave it on my desk

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Senior Politburo members ordered Bo Xilai’s removal after learning that he had eavesdropped on every tiresome aspect of their personal lives, sources have revealed.

Disgraced former leader Bo ran a widespread wiretapping operation that extended up to China’s president, it has recently been claimed.

When top leaders learned of his activities, they were mortified to realize that Bo knew every dull detail about their lives: from how they shampooed their carpets to the subjects – but not the grades or teacher’s comments – on their high-school reports.

President Hu Jintao’s right eyebrow is said to have started quivering slightly, after learning that details of his two-hour daily nosehair-plucking regimen had been overheard and ruthlessly ridiculed by Chongqing security police.

An exhausting 300,000-word dossier, available as a seemingly endless pdf, was delivered to the nine-member Standing Committee in early March, where each was embarrassed to learn of the others’ desperately dreary private lives.

Bo’s wiretaps were initiated as an anti-crime crackdown in Chongqing but soon widened, in order to pull in dirt on fellow politicians – as well as to see whose alliances lay where.

The flamboyant Bo had hoped to build up a J Edgar Hoover-style dossier on his rivals that would make him politically unassailable.

But the operation went into decline, after Bo learned that his surveillance team needed to switch shifts every two hours just in order to stay awake. “What is this vanilla bullshit?” Bo was overheard roaring at a meeting with top policeman Wang Lijun. “Get me the good stuff!”

“There’s only so much information you can do with the knowledge that Zhou Yangkang’s hair dye causes his scalp irritation, due to a mild soap allergy,” said a senior academic with close ties to the Party. “Other than to offer an aloe vera alternative.”

The details that have emerged from the wiretaps are already being described as “political Valium.”

Party spokeswoman Jiang Yu spends most of her nights reading and annotating reports from the Foreign Ministry, except on Thursdays when she attends Marxism classes, for example. Foreign minister Yang Jiechi prefers to makes visits to his elderly mother on the second Sunday of every month – the meets are described as “mostly uneventful.”

Bo did hit paydirt last December, it has been revealed, when operatives tapping Jiang Zemin’s phone finally learned the secret recipe for his ‘Seven Treasures’ dumplings.

Bo was adamant he wanted all the details on the Li Keqiang fisting rumors

“Bo’s wife, Gu, served Jiang his own dumplings when he visited,” an eyewitness claimed. “Jiang stopped chewing and his eyes widened for a second. But when he realized he hadn’t been poisoned, he finished the meal with relish.”

Bo was removed from his post in April and his secret files have since been dumped in an academic recycling plant in Chengdu.

“It’s all very humdrum stuff, not interesting at all,” said a top Party academic. “This is the main reason Chinese media doesn’t write anything about the private lives of the top leaders.”

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By Fu Xi
Futurist Correspondent

Gordo: Chang you can believe in (Image: Forbes)

NEW YORK (China Daily Show) — In his famous polemic The Coming Collapse of China (2001), Gordon Chang predicted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would implode within a decade.

Ten years later, Chang admits he was wrong — but blames the calculation on a faulty Mayan calendar.

“It was made in China. What can you expect?” Chang joked.  Now the Sinologist has gone back to the drawing board and come up with an ironclad set of new predictions.

“Depending on which calendar you use, China will collapse in the late half of the twenty-first, according to the Roman, or sometime next century if you believe the one this monk drew up for my astrology chart,” he told China Daily Show.

In his original book, Chang blamed a number of factors – including a spiritual vacuum, religious persecution, over-leveraged state banks and unbridled corruption – and pointed to a military confrontation over Taiwan as the likely tipping point for the CCP’s demise.

But for his upcoming tome Fear of a Yellow Planet (2011), Chang posited three fresh possible doomsday scenarios.

“While superficially China continues to grow,” writes Chang, “the nation faces many structural and developmental issues, as yet unaddressed, that will likely bring disaster in the next millennium.

“These include a vast and growing wealth gap, an outdated and poorly regulated banking sector, an inability to pay basic medical or education expenses, a dearth of graduate jobs, endemic corruption, constant censorship, an ongoing and unstoppable ‘brain-wealth drain,’ as well as chronic pollution and environmental degradation, all fueled by rampant inflation and a relentless provincial focus on GDP growth.

“Add rampant augmentation technology that will render many citizens unthinking lethal weapons and the ever-present threat of the Predator, and it’s a recipe for fresh government.”

In Chang’s chilling second scenario, China’s ruling party will simply decide it’s no longer worth it and wander off elsewhere.

“You first started to see this kind of political ennui  set in when Hu [Jintao] came to power and called off plans to renovate Zhongnanhai,” he said, referring to the Central Beijing eco-dome where most of China’s politicians are bred.

According to Chang, the CCP compound hasn’t been updated since Deng’s day,  its harem is  down to 400 girls from Qinghai and most buildings are in dire need of a fresh lick of paint.

But construction of a new 30-slide water park and brick-for-brick reproduction of Sanlitun Bar Street was halted in 2004, Chang says. China’s cadres are in real danger of growing bone-weary of constantly having to “save” China and its economy.

“Many of them want out. They look at Africa, at places like Niger and Somalia, and think: ‘That’s what I’m talking about’.

“Nor,” Chang added, “is China positioned to take full advantage of the upcoming Singularity.” This concept, beloved among tech-geeks, promulgates scientific advancement reaching such a point in the near-future that  humanity is essentially rendered godlike.

“The increasing speed of technological advancement will see Man transcend mere physical form to live as immortal beings of a digital universe.  But Anhui’s still going to suck.”

Chang’s final throw of the dice is the most likely scenario, and will probably  happen “before 4012.”

“There will be a ‘solipsism failure’ – call it a glitch in the matrix,” Chang postulated. “Everyone will finally become self-aware.

“If none of that happens, though, something else will,” he added. ” Of that we can be certain.”

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By XIAO YUNYU
Religion Correspondent

The spiritual leader told reporters: 'There is an 'I' in Dalai Lama'

DEHLI (China Daily Show) – Former anointed leader of Tibet and spiritual guru of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama yesterday shocked onlookers by announcing his imminent retirement from public life.

Speaking at a press conference in Delhi, India, the Dalai Lama answered a routine question about  Burma by telling world media that it was “probably time to throw in the towel.”

“As far as [Tibetan] independence goes, we’ve done all we can. God knows, we’ve tried: from armed uprisings to paintings to Richard Gere, we’ve done all we possibly can,” the exiled Tibetan religious leader told assembled press. “Maybe it’s time to focus on what’s really important in life.”

Sipping from a can of 7-Up and wearing a pair of shades, the Tibetan spiritual leader seemed calm and relaxed, refusing to be drawn any further on the subject.

But appearing an hour later, having changed from his usual saffron robes into a checked shirt, corduroy flat cap and stonewashed chinos, the Dalai Lama answered media questions in rapid-fire succession.

Chinese President Hu Jintao? “No hard feelings. As they say, don’t look for me in the morning, baby, as I’ll be gone, solid gone.” Asked about Nobel Prize-winning jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the Dalai Lama shrugged.

“Shit happens. He’ll be out in ten years. After that, who knows?”

Asked if he would miss his role as leader of the Tibetan Buddhist community, the charismatic spiritual leader said to laughter, “Certainly not those butter candles. They reek worse than a yak’s tuckus. And on the bright side, no more Richard Gere, obviously.”

The words came as a surprise, despite having told a CNN reporter in Florida  late October that  “I’m a human being. … Retirement is my right.” It also marks a major career change for the Dalai Lama, since he was declared the living incarnation of the highest power in Tibetan Buddhism and made de facto spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people seventy years ago.

The grey-haired and much-admired face of Tibetan liberation has remained a thorn in the Chinese government’s side since his flight from the troubled region following a failed uprising against Communist rule in 1959.

The Dalai Lama insisted that the plight of the Tibetan people remains close to his heart, but that he also felt it was important to devote his time to other causes.

“It’s all been happening while I’ve been busy: Facebook, Hot Pockets, Simon Cowell, Team Edward… where to even begin? I’ve got a lot to catch up on. What am I going to be doing?” He smiled. “Having some serious me-time.”

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Michael Gove (far left) enjoys his third glass of the morning as the UK's trade delegation toasted a new round of sell-outs

By RONG REN
Politics Correspondent

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – China’s ruling Politburo has called for the UK to embrace political reform.

The move came as David Cameron addressed students in Beijing today and urged them to “embrace human rights and democracy”.

“The UK’s democratic rights record is appalling,” said an official speaking to China Daily Show on condition of anonymity. “David Cameron’s Conservative Party won just over a third of the total vote [in the May 2010 general election] but were allocated not quite half the seats in Parliament. Once again, the British people were denied their right to a democratically elected parliament.”

Wang Ting, a mid-ranking bureaucrat and member of the CCP, pointed to numerous widespread scandals of  voting fraud reported in British media over the last three years, as well as recent accusations that voters were denied ballots in some constituencies when voting booths closed for afternoon tea. “It pains China to see its foreign friends treated so shabbily by their governments,” Wang added.

Chinese politicians have long expressed their wish for UK lawmakers to hold a referendum on their electoral system. Under the current method, the UK is divided into about 650 regional areas, known as constituencies. Whichever candidate gains the most votes in any single area becomes an MP and sits in the Houses of Parliament.

An alternative proportional representation (PR) system involves each party being allocated the same percentage of seats in parliament as they won in the popular vote.

“PR is a properly democratic system. Not this first-past-the-post shit,” Wang scorned. But some have questioned the timing of the remarks.

“Every time the UK tries to do the something positive on trade, or even civil liberties, in China, PR is thrown back in our faces. People have got to realize the UK has got a very different history to China and can’t be expected to develop at the same pace,” said Vince Cable, a UK treasury spokesman. As a Liberal Democrat, Cable was one of the leading beneficiaries of the current system at the last election.

“China must stop meddling in the UK’s internal affairs,’ Cable added. “I can’t imagine how hurt the feelings of the British people will be right now. I don’t even want to think about that.”

Surprisingly, some Chinese historians have come out in support of Cable’s comments.

“Vince Cable has really put this into perspective: China has over five billion years of history, whereas the UK has only really had a national identity since 1941, when they helped the Americans in destroying the foreign ghost devils of Japan (and some other countries) during the War Against Japanese Aggression [sometimes known as World War Two]. How could they possibly compete politically?” asked Wo Bei Bei, founder of the China Real History Society.

Despite pressure from China, the UK is likely to ignore demands for change, as the system has been successfully propping up unpopular UK governments for decades. “The system works,” one high-ranking British civil servant told China Daily Show.

Sociologists on both sides agree, pointing to research in their respective countries analyzing political dissatisfaction. Independent polls carried out in the UK show between 40-70% of UK voters disapprove of their government at any given time.

Those conducted by China tell a completely different story. Over 92.2% of potential voters in China are “greatly pleased” by the Chinese government, with the remaining 7.2% “completely fucking cock-a-hoop. Anything those muthas say or do is alright by me”.

Premier Hu Jintao enjoys a personal approval rating of 96.6%, all of which is cited as strong evidence for the UK to embrace political reform.

British Prime Minster David Cameron was at pains to sidestep the debate last night. “It’s all very well using buzz words like real democracy and people power,” he told reporters. “But where is the trade-off in all of this? Trade is what can really enrich the communication between our two nations.”

Cameron is also said to have  warned  Chinese officials not to raise the issue of Cornish independence during the talks, saying that it was an “internal matter” and “the British people will never be divided.”

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