Oops! The Telegraph can't tell Hu Jintao and Chen Liangyu apart...
... and we thought Xinhua's mistake of illustrating a story on the causes of the debilitating disease multiple sclerosis with an X-ray photo of Homer Simpson's brain was bad!
In his latest blog entry, Richard Spencer of the Telegraph cites a report by a group of Sinophile Brits organising a festival called ChinaNow that supports the notion (held by well-educated Chinese types) that "Chinese people were better informed on foreign affairs than British people were". The survey found among other things that:
A quarter (24%) of Chinese respondents could name Gordon Brown as current British Prime Minister (although 22% still thought it was Tony Blair) whereas only 7% of UK respondents correctly identified Hu Jintao as President of China. More than half (54%), of UK respondents could not name a single Chinese politician.
It would perhaps not be so ironic if the subject matter at hand wasn't the supposed China/Britain knowledge gap, but the Telegraph has chosen to illustrate the point that "93% of Brits couldn’t identify Chinese President Hu Jintao" with a picture of former Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu who has been ousted for corruption! Major OOPS indeed!
It may be the case that to the eyes of the writer, President Hu and Chen Liangyu look very similar (compare pictures for yourself!), but it may also be the case that he relegates the menial tasks of picture selection and/or uploading of the blog entry to a:
1. photo editor,
2. young wide-eyed foreign intern, or
3. local assistant,
in which case the first two should be sacked and the third beheaded!
It was perhaps divine providence that Shanghaiist should be struck with insomnia again tonight. It is 5.13am Shanghai time now, and our Google RSS reader tells us the above post was just published a while ago at 3.24am. We're going to bed right now and since it is highly likely that the picture would have been changed by the time we're awake, we decided to take this screenshot for posterity's sake.
UPDATE: Looks like the mugshot was changed at 12:12pm Shanghai time!
Related links
Shanghaiist: More on Xinhua and Homer Simpson's brain
The Telegraph: The China/Britain knowledge gap
ChinaNow: Report on lack of knowledge between Chinese and British people
