The Onion goes Chinese

Satirical U.S. joke paper The Onion is, for a reason not quite clear yet, doing a China special. Maybe they caught on to all the recent coverage of Chinese companies buying up Western media and decided that it'd be a perfect time to do their own spoof - sans any sensitive anniversaries or other events that would normally set off a decidedly humorless notice from the office of Qin Gang.

While the headlines are a lark, we'd give the satire itself a B. None of the articles themselves capture the true crazy genius of the foreign-targeted media in this country. We guess that after years of reading Xinhua and China Daily and all the rest of our state-owned English papers, we've found enough unintentional black comedy to render this attempt perhaps unintentionally depressing.