Lesbian scholar Helen Zia held the Olympic lightning rod, even though China “doesn’t even recognize that we exist.” Her personal essay in the San Francisco Chronicle on why she ran, and a CBS TV interview where she says to “protest against each other, be alongside each other is something that is an Olympic ideal.”
CNN commentator Jack Cafferty is a household name in China for saying the Chinese are “basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last fifty years.” Is China a nation or a race? Americans identifying as Chinese see Cafferty’s remarks as racist and create a petition, which gets Helen Zia’s signature, according to the SF Sentinel. On Monday, Cafferty clarifies that it was about “the Chinese government, not the Chinese people,” but two days later China’s Foreign Minister spokesman Jiang Yu says that Cafferty “will be denounced by righteous people all over the world,” and the national newspaper China Daily calls Cafferty “pathetic” for an attack “against an ethnic group of people.” CNN apologizes to everyone who misinterpreted the concept of debate. The Foreign Ministry calls CNN insincere and says the network is trying “to sow division between the Chinese government and the people.”