Busy waitress couldn’t make it to China’s @UN_Women debate on gender diversity pic.twitter.com/sbmjXXDQIH

— China Daily Show (@chinadailyshow) April 13, 2015

I understand the HeForShe movement is a global initiative spotlighting men (officially, “a solidarity movement for gender equality that brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half”), but holding a gender equality discussion without inviting any women kind of makes for bad optics.

Also, men clearly need more appreciation:

Xinhua caption [sic]: “Actor Zhang Xiaolong (R,1) receives the certification of appreciation from Roberta Clarke(Middle), Regional Director of the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.”

It’s almost as if the HeForShe China Launch on Sunday was organized by Republicans.

h/t RFH

At some point, you think maybe Xinhua would stop letting the more unsavory of their foreign copyeditors access the Twitter account. That point is not today.

Preaching of “#China military threat” makes #US a butt http://t.co/XrvoSRaUjO pic.twitter.com/u38vTePyL4

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) March 6, 2015

Quoting from the full article, “Commentary: Preaching of “China military threat” makes U.S. a butt,” by Zhu Junqing:

The allegation, along with its outcry over Chinese military budget and so called “cyber attack,” only makes Uncle Sam a butt and exposes its consistent indecent tactics in addressing China’s peaceful development.

I resent my nation being called a butt, because I know you are but what am I

— Stan Yee (@stanyee) March 6, 2015

(H/T Every foreign correspondent on Twitter)

It’s adorable. We really want to know though: why did @XHNews tweet the following at @TheOnion?

RT China’s #moonrover #Yutu awake after troubled dormancy http://t.co/PJco3XwDiN @NASA @TheOnion @HuffingtonPost @BreakingNews @googlenews

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) February 13, 2014

Although… that would explain a few things about Chinese media.

UPDATE, 2/14: Hmm.

People’s Daily publishes “Jade Rabbit’s Diary”, “I have no regrets”: http://t.co/xdV9YwtJpq

— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) February 14, 2014

Xinhua host and moonlighter for the Daily Mail’s venerable China Bureau Nikki Aaron has been blissfully peddling the British tabloid yarns of her “China adventures” for the last few months. All well and good.

Here’s her latest, on dating, a subject she has visited before. The extremely confessional tone of the Mail piece begs the question: who is Nikki Aaron? On her website, she describes herself as “a versatile news anchor and TV presenter with global network experience… Nikki co-founded MetroStyle bilingual magazine in 2010.”

Here’s more, from an interview with – and apparently this actually exists – a publication called Nee Hao magazine: “I’ve been quite successful in the sense that I run my own magazine and work as TV presenter for a respected news agency, but I worked my ass off for 6 years… Xinhua is the state-owned News agency in China, and quite an honor to work for.” [My emphasis]

In fact, Aaron has been giving regular interviews to the press back home about her “high-profile position” in Beijing. Here she is in the Derby Telegraph talking about fame on a visit to Hong Kong: “I was secretly hoping someone might point me out, considering my show is aired on the giant screens at Hong Kong airport, as well as on the subway trains there. But alas, nobody did!”

In Nee Hao again, discussing her work: “I’ve become a bit of a China expert over the past two years… I won an award for the best documentary last year, in which I travelled to Qinghai province (bordering Tibet), where I met and interviewed the family of the Dalai Lama, visited the birthplace of the Dalai Lama, and explored Tibetan Buddhism in China. It was quite a ground-breaking programme.”

Unhappily, readers, future employers and little children should be aware that, for a select few, working for an “honorable” news agency comes with a few strings. At least one of which includes peddling hardcore Chinese propaganda on “somewhat” sensitive issues:

In the above, released in March, Aaron’s professional-sounding voice and accent are used to lend considerable authority to a 15-minute Xinhua documentary on a channel called “China View,” entitled Life in Flames: The Story Behind Tibetan Self-Immolation. (The program might have baffled regular Xinhua viewers: up until that point, the broadcaster had completely ignored the 100 or so self-immolations which have occurred in Tibet over the last year or so.)

The documentary purports to take “a closer look at what’s really behind these extreme suicides.” Indeed, close your eyes and it could be the BBC, so perfectly has Aaron has captured the strange cadences and emphases of British news voiceovers. (In another, earlier piece of Mail gibberish, Aaron says she “landed” the Xinhua role as “a TV news anchor, reporting to a global audience of 2.5 billion” [again, my emphasis; it’s doubtful Xinhua TV pulls in 2.5 of anything].)

Despite the production value, Life in Flames is thinly sourced, controversial and perplexing, to say the least. It is a relatively recent move for Chinese media to use presentable Caucasian foreigners to add credibility to news reports – one which should probably be viewed with some skepticism (foreign journalists — such as Gady Epstein, who called Life in Flames “remarkable propaganda” — are rarely even allowed in Tibet).

That said, it is not without precedent: at last year’s Two Sessions in November, Andrea Yu, a credentialed Australian reporter for something called the Global CAMG Media Group caused a minor sensation with her apparent ability to consistently get the attention of Chinese politicians at press conferences. In fact, Yu was a Party shill, planted by a company with a majority shareholding in Beijing, to ask pre-scripted softball questions. The ensuing controversy saw Yu being dragged through the grinder before ending up down an absolute wormhole of soft-power failure.

Sceptical of Aaron’s own “reporting,” we contacted Robbie Barnett, Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Tibetan Studies at the University of Colombia, to ask whether our conclusion was fair. His answer is reproduced with permission here:

This piece is problematic as a piece of journalism, including in the smallest details. The topic that it discusses concerns repeated and tragic loss of life in bitterly contested circumstances, and the ponderous approach displayed here seems a provocative choice for such an issue.

An editorial decision has been made to support the Chinese government’s current position, and it cites only that view. So this is more an advertisement than news, possibly a paid one. There is no disclosure of this station’s affiliation or adherence, though it is evidently not an independent body, and its use of confessions by serving prisoners is not noted or explained. Its allegations about US radio broadcasts are incorrect: according to my knowledge, they do not refer to immolators as martyrs. The presenter completely mispronounces all the Tibetan names, suggesting a lack of basic research or of concern. The role of the presenter in fronting this and the choice to use a stentorian speaking style can be judged by viewers for themselves.

With foreign media now battling unprecedented restrictions on their work in China (Bloomberg, Paul Mooney incident, etc.) and citizen “Big V” journalists ruthlessly monitored, why is a British journalist fronting hardline CCP propaganda for, in her words, “a respected news agency [that’s] quite an honor to work for”? Given that Aaron is, in her own words, a “China expert,” is she so naïve as to think that her Xinhua work counts as actual, real journalism – and if so, what does such credulousness say about her reporting abilities? Or does she stand by the video, in which case she has some serious questions to answer.

(Counterpoint: for a more sympathetic take on this dilemma, see Eric Fish’s remarks about Andrea Yu, which are still very relevant here.)

Those, like Aaron and Yu, who pursue payment, easy government relations and Mail clicks in exchange for values and professional integrity should ask where it leads in the end. First Xinhua, now the Daily Mail. Where next – the Pyongyang Bugle?

ISTANBUL WINS RIGHT TO HOST 2020 SUMMER OLYMPICS, reads the Xinhua headline on a September 8 edition of Changsha Evening News. There’s just one big, huge, obvious mistake:

Tokyo is hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Oops. Regret the error?

A few things are happening here. First, it’s clear that Changsha Evening News feels no need to do fact-checking, because why would it ever fact-check Xinhua, the first and last source of all news in this country? Xinhua could send out a news blast that US missiles veered off course and landed in London, and at least one Chinese paper would splash US BOMBS BRITAIN across its front page.

Second: of all the cities to get wrong, it had to be Tokyo, didn’t it? The capital city of the country that just happens to have longstanding problems — which you might describe, depending on who you are, as “friction,” “acrimony,” or “hatred” — with China.

Finally, Xinhua doesn’t regret shit. It hasn’t acknowledged its error, according to Epoch Times. But it’s not as if people haven’t noticed. A couple of netizen reactions, via Epoch Times:

NJ-Peng comments “Isn’t this ‘speading rumors?’ Isn’t there a serious impact? They [the authorities] arrest [netizens] for ‘spreading rumors,’ regardless of whether or not you apologize. So will the police do anything? Can [the government] ensure equality before the law?”

Zhang Ming, Professor at People’s University of China’s Institute of International Relations, commented on Weibo, “When officials announce mistaken information, they should be held accountable unconditionally. When, however, the officials have no credibility and almost all information is false, then the system won’t question the officials’ lies and rumors.”

Changsha Evening News recalled thousands of newspapers due to Xinhua’s blunder, reportedly at its own expense. Its deputy chief editor wrote on Sina Weibo that Xinhua should “reflect on the mistake,” as SCMP phrases it. We don’t even care if that translation’s faulty, because just picturing that — Xinhua, reflecting on its mistake, what its editorialists have beseeched of countless others — is too rich.

SCMP continues:

According to people.com.cn, the website of People’s Daily, Xinhua sent a flash at 3.10am saying Istanbul had won the right to host the 2020 Games. A state-owned television station also initially misreported the win.

No one watches the watchers. Xinhua is everything that is wrong with journalism in this country, if you haven’t already figured that out from all our coverage of Xinhua’s fetish for porn and camel toes, bum cracks and floppy dicks, etc.

Xinhua Mistakenly Claims Istanbul as Host for 2020 Olympics (Epoch Times)

In the above picture, a doctor is about to administer a lethal injection to the woman being strapped to the bed. It’s a stark and somber scene, only more shocking because a cameraman was allowed to document, close-up, the stages of this real-life execution.

At least, that’s what Xinhua, the official press agency of the People’s Republic of China, thought when it published a slideshow titled, “Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side.” (The pictures have since been removed, but you can find them on the website Out of My Face.) It turns out the images were actually screengrabs from a 2011 porno titled Lethal Injection, produced by DSP Booking (dspbooking.com) and starring its founder, Guda, who plays the doctor.

“Looks like she is not happy with being killed and is fighting with the guard and myself,” Guda, asked what was happening in the scene, told us via email. “She looks like she was knocked out, strapped down and checked for her vital signs, then executed by lethal injection. Then I bang her.”

Oh. Do continue…

How do you feel about Xinhua?

I love them and would like to ask them for a tour of their beautiful country. I will give them demonstrations of our execution techniques and possible alliterative uses for the cute’r cadavers.

How did you find out Xinhua screengrabbed your movie, and what was your reaction?

One of our customers forwarded the link to my partner. I tweeted and sent out a few emails, then I took off all my clothes and did some jumping and yelling.

How does it feel to be excerpted, albeit inadvertently, by China’s most official, topmost news agency?

I’ve had hundreds of body cavity searches so it felt pretty good.

Will you use this exposure in future pitches, clips, or promotional material? “Guda, as seen on Xinhua”?

I am a shameless self-promoter. This all works out very well, fitting nicely into my plans for world domination. I would like a copy of the actual paper, although that probably could be faked pretty easy.

How did the inspiration / idea for Lethal Injection come about?

All our movies are custom-made (customvideos4u.com). So someone wrote the script and paid us to make it.

What misconceptions exist about fetish porn? Do you think Xinhua might have shed light on any of these misconceptions?

The biggest misconception is that these types of movies inspire people to do these types of acts for real. What website/movie inspirited the Medieval torture chambers? Xinhua shed light on the best custom movie-maker in the industry. There may have been some misconceptions that I was not the best. But I think we have cleared that up pretty good here.

May have to use your imagination slightly on this one — if you could cast Xinhua in a fetish porn, what role would it play?

Xinhua is most defiantly a villain. Lying is bad nkay…  but I’d make it funny so Xinhua would have a huge cock.

Before this incident, what did you know about Xinhua? Knowing what you know now… what would you guess they are like?

I keep up on world events pretty well. Had I been asked directly if I knew who they were, I’d have had to make an educated guess as to who they were. My guess is they are the Chinese version of Fox News.

Guda runs DSP Booking (dspbooking.com), and can be followed on Twitter @maxcoxxx.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on… you, I guess. Fool me four times, shame all around. Fool me five times, does your mother know you’re doing this? Fool me… I’ve lost count. Stop fooling me!

Xinhua has done it again: reporting fake news as real news. As Forbes explains:

Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government’s mouthpiece, translated verbatim a New Yorker magazine satire and published it as real news on its International News Online section. The New Yorker piece, written by satire columnist Andy Borowitz, says Bezos’ purchase resulted from an unintentional click of the mouse, and that he has been negotiating with the Post’s customer service department to retract it. Not realizing the news’ satirical nature, People’s Website, operated by another Chinese state newspaper, People’s Daily, also reprinted  the Xinhua translation.

I don’t know which of these first three paragraphs from Borowitz’s story didn’t tip off the Chinese news editors that this was NOT A REAL STORY, but perhaps this is where we simply tip our hat and give credit where it’s due:

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, told reporters today that his reported purchase of the Washington Post was a “gigantic mix-up,” explaining that he had clicked on the newspaper by mistake.

“I guess I was just kind of browsing through their website and not paying close attention to what I was doing,” he said. “No way did I intend to buy anything.”

Mr. Bezos said he had been oblivious to his online shopping error until earlier today, when he saw an unusual charge for two hundred and fifty million dollars on his American Express statement.

Or is this the place we remind you that Xinhua just published screenshots from a porno, thinking it depicted a real execution? They’re not — how do we put this nicely? — very, um, savvy over there.

Or has Xinhua slyly opened a humor/troll section without telling anyone?

The Borowitz Report has gotten Chinese media before (it’s because it’s hosted on The New Yorker, of course). In April, 21st Century Business Herald was snared by a piece of satire that claimed Kim Jong-un wanted to declare war on Microsoft.

Bezos’ ‘Accidental’ Purchase Of The Washington Post? It’s Just A Joke, Xinhua (Forbes, h/t Eric Fish)

It’s been a while since our friends at Xinhua have done something truly absurd, but today, China’s official state-run news agency has really outdone itself. The culprit this time is not Xinhua’s English-language slideshow, but a Chinese edition, which recently published 40 pictures that appear to be screenshots from a fetish porno.

We tip our hat to the website Out of My Face, which discovered the above as part of Xinhua’s slideshow titled, “Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side.”

Actual record of female inmate’s execution, eh? Really, Chinese state-run news agency?

That, um, appears to be rape porn.

I did a quick image search and found the photos on Themis Collection (SFW), whose website owner says he got the photos from PKF Studios (most definitely NSFW; you can Google it if you’d like).

Out of My Face writes that it traced the pictures to a site called xxxrape.net, though it’s unverified whether the photos were first published there or not. The point is: these pictures do not show an “actual” execution, and they fall way short of “exposing the world’s darkest side.”

UPDATE: Read our interview with Guda, star of the above film.

It’s here we’d like to remind you that this is not the first time Xinhua has run porn in its slideshows. Last October, we discovered that it was using screengrabs from the porn site Ultimate Surrender in a piece called “Crazy women fighters.”

Xinhua wasn’t the only Chinese news site that posted this most recent set of photos though. There was also Global Times, which ran a slideshow with the same title three days before Xinhua.

Nice job, everyone.

Xinhua exposes world’s (and young woman’s) underbelly (Out of My Face)

Ed’s note:

On April 19, the US Department of State published its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which included a section on China. It was typical, mundane, and features nothing you don’t already know, including restriction of Uighur and Tibetan movement, harassment of journalists and dissidents, prison labor, discrimination, extrajudicial killings, etc.

On April 21, the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published its annual Human Rights Record of the United States, which was typical, mundane, and features nothing you don’t already know, including school shootings, low voter turnout, politically authorized eavesdropping, a widening income gap, discrimination, extrajudicial detention of foreigners, etc. 

Because we’re on the same damn carousel that goes round and round, a year has passed but the sights haven’t much changed. Below, our previous post on this subject, with analysis from TAR Nation.

Originally posted May 31, 2012:

Tao: The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China claims its report on the US’s human rights record is “to reveal the true human rights situation of the United States to people across the world and urge the United States to face up to its own doings.” Did it succeed in doing so?

TAR: No. The Chinese government has difficulty in differentiating between human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and simple controversy, which is easy to understand as there is very little of any of these in China. Gun ownership, for example, is a controversy, not a human rights violation. It was less a report on human rights in America and more of a statement that shit happens in the USA. I was reminded of the “There are no cats in America” song from An American Tail. There bloody well are cats and they will fucking stab you.

Another detractor was the fact that the Communist Party spends half its propaganda power hating on the Western media every single day but relied on it almost exclusively for this report. The New York Times, the BBC, Reuters, the Washington Post and Bloomberg were their main sources. Proving that the Chinese government correctly understands irony, if one follows the statistics they quote in the report, many of them lead straight back to the State Department. Oh, except for the part on press freedoms. They had to get some of those from Russia and China.

Of course the US has problems with human rights right now and in the past, problems that some are trying to fix and others are trying to make worse, but the concept of human rights is not the enemy. As with any difficulty, the problem is bastards.

What part of the report was most eye-opening and potentially informative to you?

By far the most hilarious part was the civil and political rights part. It was like watching a bloodstained psychopath ripping a kitten limb-from-limb doing a PETA advertisement. Where was the first place they went? Occupy Wall Street, a vague and thus ultimately doomed protest movement. I never realized exactly how much the propaganda masters had blown it out of proportion. They seem to think that there is a massive government conspiracy to silence the protests. There isn’t. The government of the United States is currently to the left, and so are the protestors. There would be no point. It would be like the Communist party going after the wu mao dang. The Occupy protesters aren’t arrested for their ideas or beliefs. They’re arrested because they’re blocking traffic. The Communist Party seems to not understand that the POINT of civil disobedience is to get arrested, a way to nonviolently shame your opponents and remind your government of their responsibilities. If you don’t get arrested, then you’re doing it wrong. There is a massive difference in civil disobedience and non-violent protest, and I find both rather noble. The difference was expressed beautifully in Martin Luther King Jr.’s But If Not speech.

Is there a part that you think could have been done better?

I think that if I covered my penis and balls in ink and flung myself at a wall, I could have written a better report.

Do you agree with China’s claim that the US has not “faced up to its own doings”? If that’s the case, what should the punishment for the US be?

Yes, and they should be imprisoned without trial for years, beaten, tortured, given a trial without proper legal representation, and then sentenced to arbitrarily long jail terms, reeducation through forced labor, extrajudicial imprisonment by hundreds of guards, intimidation of their family and then finally be brutally executed.

Quoting: “A report published by the U.S. Department of Justice on September 15, 2011, revealed that in 2010 the U.S. residents aged 12 and above experienced 3.8 million violent victimizations, 1.4 million serious violent victimizations, 14.8 million property victimizations and 138,000 personal thefts.” Can you put that into perspective for us?

“He victimized my property. Ouch! My human rights!” I find it disturbing to personify lawns. It just makes cutting the grass tragic. Also, I was in America for 2010, and I am at least responsible for nine of the above figures, so, I will not throw stones… because, apparently, that’s a human rights violation and a victimization.

It seems like homicides are becoming an epidemic that threatens to touch every household in America. For example, according to the report, “Just four weeks into 2011, San Francisco saw eight homicides — compared with five during the same time of the previous year.”

Well, it’s hardly every household. As a matter of fact, assuming that every person who was murdered had at least three people who loved them (which is more than I have and a stretch considering most people who get murdered tend to be dicks), then the amount of people touched by murder in a single year would be approximately 0.00015%. If no one loved them, then it would be 0.00005%. Hardly an epidemic. I’m not defending murder, though. After reading a week of editorials in the Global Times, I can see the merit in it.

Not to mention school bullying. Have you seen the pernicious effects of school bullying, and, more to the point, can you comment on this jackknife powerbomb?

Does the Chinese government think there is anyone on the other side of this issue? Is there a pro-wedgie lobby I don’t know about? The world is full of bullies, and the presence of anti-bullying campaigns in America is at least proof of trying to put a stop to it. Frankly, if the US would have just not published figures on this, it would have never appeared in the report. Trying to fix something amounts to human rights violations, apparently. Of course, we would all like to live in a world without bullying, but without bullying, we would be living in a country called the People’s Republic of Candy, and it would actually be a republic. Sadly, this is not the case.

With regard to the powerbomb: poorly executed. The trick with powerbombs is to change momentum while the powerbombee is at a moment of weightlessness or to rest them on your shoulders for maximum downward velocity.

What are your thoughts on the fact that Americans own guns?

I think, as you can see from the prison population in America, that there are a lot of assholes in the USA. But you can’t give guns to the nice people and take the guns away from the assholes because that’s profiling. Honestly, gun ownership in America is stupid. But, hey, that’s how Americans like to do things, and I say this meaning “Americans,” not some vague “America.” Americans like guns. They’re dumb, but they like them. Thus, the American government can’t pry them from their cold dead hands, which are cold and dead because they have been shot. Also, Americans are really fat. It’s just too difficult to stab someone with pudgy arms. But — and I know this to be a fact — you can level a rifle on your belly, and, if you don’t breathe, you can hit a raccoon in the eye from 100 yards.

Let’s play a little word association. Occupy Wall Street.

Naked hippie women.

Law enforcement.

Naked woman in a hat.

Incarceration.

Naked women in communal showers.

Unemployment.

Depressed naked women.

Immigration.

Exotic naked women.

Rich-poor gap.

Naked communist women.

This is an election year in the US. What effect do you think China’s human rights report will have on President Obama’s chances of getting reelected?

None. The only people stupid enough to put stock in the report are people who think it is a genuine report from China think tanks rather than a propaganda response to the State Department’s Human Rights Report. On that side, you’ve basically got people who believe in aromatherapy and/or ghosts. These people either don’t vote, or vote for tree people and/or racists.

The report’s authors are correct that the US has problems of its own. But I’m surprised that China would resort to such snark to prove a point, and a point that, I should say, is reached through questionable methodology, against a State Department report that is specifically for policymaking and information. Do you think China’s report serves not to enhance its position but weaken it vis-a-vis its own human rights record?

Really? Surprised are you? Look, China’s media is the laughing stock of the world. They’re petty, cruel, predictable and oddly pathetic, second only to North Korea. They’ve been doing this report since 2003, you know, the year Bad Boys II was released. This has nothing to do with enhancing China’s position. China’s relationship with human rights seems to get more complicated every year. They used to just lie about it and say everything was great. Then they seemed convinced that they had a different version of human rights. When the media finally started reporting human rights abuses, it was related to how great China was at fixing it. It seems increasingly clear that China is simply at war with the concept human rights. I know that sounds ridiculous, but they block human rights websites. Why? What could you possibly gain from that? Why, of all the Japanese girls peeing on each other and racist Swedes on the Internet, is the enemy human rights? More to your point, how is anyone else supposed to view that? There is no way the Chinese government can defend decisions to limit information on human rights? So, no, this does not accomplish their goal of discrediting the most important concept of compassion ever devised. I wish I could say that it would all end in failure, but the human race is stupid and will grab at any chance it can to be a bastard.

Finally… is there anything else you would like to add?

Naked women.

Done.

TAR Nation wrote the BJC column To Serve People.

The title is “Embarassed by tight sport pants.” Maybe not safe for work. I don’t know where you people work.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

• Xinhua Has Truly Outdone Itself With Latest Slideshow Featuring A Baby’s Dick In A Cup
• Does This Look Like A Fallopian Tube To You? A Case In Gender Studies
• Xinhua Goes Full Porno With Its Latest Slideshow, “Crazy Women Fighters”
• Whoever Xinhua Slideshow Editor Yamei Wang Is, We Want To Meet Him Or Her
• Goodness Gracious, Xinhua: “Terrible! When Women Get Drunk”
• Xinhua’s Slideshow Of “Super Movie Villains Of All Time” Includes The Joker, Voldemort, And The Two Gay Leads In Brokeback Mountain
• Xinhua Does Not Cease To Amuse: “Happy Moments Of Overweight People”
• Things That Are Wrong With This Xinhua Headline: “Long Leg Beauties Come”
• China’s Official Press Agency Loves Those Sexy Teen Models

(H/T Alicia)

I have to admit, the first time I encountered @XHNews, calling itself the “Xinhua News Agency” — description, “A multimedia group, Xinhua delivers the most authoritative China news as well as fast and objective global news” — I thought it was a joke. (First tweet, March 1: “Annual sessions of China’s top legislature and political advisory body are scheduled to open in early March.”) It did itself no favors by posting occasionally in all-caps, a la:

XI JINPING NAMED CHAIRMAN OF CPC CENTRAL MILITARY COMMISSION

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) November 15, 2012

Sometimes, it would post screenshots – Twitter pics — of articles that were written in English, and when the article was too long for one screenshot, it would tweet a series of them, like so. And God, who could forget this next gem?

Hu Jintao cast a vote in election for CPC Central Committee, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. twitter.com/XHNews/status/…

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) November 14, 2012

Also, as recently as Friday, Xinhua tweeted about pole dancing:

China’s first national pole dancing teamyoutube.com/watch?v=H41M3_…

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) December 7, 2012

But no, rest assured, @XHNews is not a spoof account. We’d love to meet the person who operates it (probably someone very senior on the copydesk). Short of that, we’ll just say that the feed is actually very clean, free of typos, sometimes rather informative. Xinhua currently has 6,611 followers while following no one back, which is probably a good thing — we’d hate to see it pull a China Daily.

However, it does seem slightly ironic for a government agency to be using Twitter when none of its people, technically, are allowed to. Twitter has been blocked by the Great Firewall since July 2009, and with recent upgrades to said firewall, several VPN services have been crippled as well. (Note to everyone: use Witopia; it still works.)

And wouldn’t you know it, Chinese Internet users have just found out about Xinhua’s naughty tweeting, and they’re none too happy about it. Via South China Morning Post:

“I am going to report this to the police: Xinhua is obviously breaching our internet laws,” said a netizen on Sina Weibo, China’s micro-blogging service.

“Xinhua has proved itself a traitor who has chosen an evil path,” said another Weibo user in an ironic tone, referring to a speech given by President Hu Jintao.

Hu had said in his speech at the 18th party congress that “we reject both the old and rigid closed-door path and the evil path of shifting banners”. The phrase “evil path” has since become a hot word among China’s internet users.

Those who are tweeting from behind the Great Firewall are trying to be cute about it, but you can sense their simmering anger:

@xhnews could u pls tell us , how can u go to twitte? isn’t it illegal in china? uh?

—  貓貓教 起哄黨  (@2013yy) December 11, 2012

人家新华社才不用神马vpn，专线接入妥妥儿的 RT: @chenshaoju: OpenVPN 被封了，求 @xhnews 指点～～

— 大白Two (@dabaitwo) December 11, 2012

“@wentommy: 咋了？跟僵尸号发飙。 RT @lanpijin:你是一个大傻逼！@xhnews”就是，这个账号无人认领啊

— dustrong (@yangyipei) December 11, 2012

Once again, “rule of law” has been made a mockery of. In China, a law is only a law if you don’t know how to get away with breaking it.

UPDATE, 12:37 am: Maybe we can use the comments section to link to our favorite Xinhua tweets? I’ll get us started:

Chinese men warned of smoking-impotency linkt.cn/zWJ0KBW(File photo) twitter.com/XHNews/status/…

— Xinhua News Agency (@XHNews) July 17, 2012

UPDATE, 12:53 am: Oh this is rich. Check out who Xinhua retweeted back in March:

This NY Times.

As China promotes up-and-comers to its approximately 350-member CPC Central Committee, culminating in an announcement (we hope) of the all-powerful nine-member Central Politburo Standing Committee, the place you should be keeping an eye on today is @XHNews, Xinhua’s official Twitter account. Not only will it probably break the news of the new Standing Committee — yes, Traditional Media, eat your hearts out: Xinhua is breaking news via Twitter now — but it’s also currently upchucking, like a cat full of fur, golden chunks of unintentional comedy.

Above, the man of animal magnetism. Xinhua, in master understatement, tells us:

Hu Jintao cast a vote in election for CPC Central Committee, Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

What are some things Hu Jintao is thinking? Skyfall. Winslow Homer. Jill Kelley. A tear for the ghetto. Whether life has meaning in the shadow of our imminent demise. Why the Kansas City Chiefs are so bad. Please add your contribution in the comments.

[Twitter]

"Please make sure Madam Whiplash gets these pronto."

Here’s Xinhua’s special slideshow of delegates of the 18th CPC National Congress arriving in Beijing. These are the good folks for whom cops shut multiple lanes of traffic from the airport to Tiananmen.

Captioned with RFH.

"When can I take these fucking beads off?"

"I'm just going to stand here for 20 minutes. Everyone cool with that?"

"Quick, first one through customs gets shotgun."

"Do you think Hu Jintao will recognize me this year? I'm Rick James, bitch!"

"Psst, write this down: There's a dead Tibetan on the plane."

"Last time I came to Beijing, I was arrested for being a petitioner."

"That man in the cowboy hat just touched me."

Who doesn’t love a good photo-bombing baby, right? Or for that matter, just a photo of a baby — totally awesome, yeah? And while we’re at it, who doesn’t also love a picture of a baby’s penis, amirite? Guys, you with me?

I’m not sure what the journalistic policy is on posting pictures of nude toddlers… at what age is it child porn? Serious question. I mean, it’s obviously fine if it’s a baby, but what if the child is, say, 11? You’re OK with 11? How about 13? How about this one? These are the sort of thought-provoking questions we can thank Xinhua for inspiring.

If you’d like to see the uncensored nude pics (yes, multiple), head on over at Xinhua, bastion of journalism, lover of porn, hater of gays, women, common sense.

UPDATE, 11/20, 1:46 am: Xinhua is recycling its own slideshows. Here’s “Funny pictures of babies,” published yesterday morning, featuring some of the pictures you see above.

(H/T Alicia)

Here is Xinhua’s latest slideshow, “Gourd craft-based products attract collectors in N China.”

We tried, briefly and unsuccessfully, to see penises where there were none, for gourds, however phallic, fall short of the “unintentional dong” standard.

But there is something better. There is something better indeed.

Fallopian tubes.

Yes, the good ol’ f-tubes. The rollicking double fallope. The tip-top durable oviducts. The trusty utero-tubal superhighway.

Determined to confirm what is clearly an overt attempt by one of China’s major organs (of state media, I mean) to incept us with images of the female anatomy (for what purpose? Creation as a sublimated desire of procreation, art standing in for sex? Unclear for the moment), I posed the question “Does this look a fallopian tube to you?” to several people on gchat.

The responses I got were very, very interesting, and — I’m not going to lie — probably say more about one’s gender than anything else. I’ll divide the answers into two groups: Men and Women.

First, the ladies, who decided that the picture in fact didn’t really look like fallopian tubes, due to its knots and upside-downness:

The guys had no such equivocations. If you, in looking at the Chinese man’s beautiful gourds, saw fallopian tubes, that makes you a MAN, man:

Only one person abstained:

(H/T Alicia)