Despite the fact that Kevin Rudd - the fluent Mandarin speaking leader of the Australian Labor Party - is widely predicted to romp it in at the Australian Federal election this coming Saturday, it seems he's not taking any chances. The latest salvo in Rudd's "earnestness offensive" according to the Sydney Morning Herald, takes form in a seven-metre billboard of The Great Rudd (see right) that has been suspended above Cameron Road in Hong... more ›

The video includes two images of Kevin Rudd cleverly photoshopped into old communist propaganda posters (yes, the type that you'd find in the Dongtai Lu antique market), and classic lines among the subtitles (which are supposed to the translation for the rubbish Chinese voiceovers) include "Rudd impress and frighten Australian person with his earnestness offensive," and "He unnerve decrepit Howard by deploying clever principle of 'similar difference'. Leader Rudd declares swift and violent Education Revolution." Ingenious. And as the Sydney Morning Herald notes, political parties with their multi-million dollar advertising budgets have a thing or two to learn from guerilla tactics such as these. more ›

With the dust now settled on last week's APEC summit in Australia, we came on a juicy tidbit of news that either didn't get much mileage in the Chinese press or escaped the news that we read. Shanghaiist reader Fergus Ryan filled us in: more ›