I wasn't talking about the tree planting. I was talking about the text I quoted. Here it is again.

Elsewhere, governments may have been glued to the television

I think the PRC and CPC are great! I just hate this style of 'journalism'. If anything, the news here is that the bastion of reactionary liberalism in the BBC is doing it for the PRC. I.e. their trump derangement is stronger than their sinophobia.

When I wrote the bit you quoted:

the entire screenshotted excerpt hangs on this (likely imaginary) counterexample

I meant that the framing of the article, that the tree-planting was a deliberate 'message to Washington', hangs on the hypothetical (other governments glued to the television) that the author assumes to be true.

If we don't give the publisher the benefit of the doubt (and when it comes to the BBC, I don't), this is just another form of orientalist 'China-watching'. Except instead of the author picking apart some inane nonsense to paint those inscrutable orientals in a negative light, they're doing so to paint them positively.

ish. he's certainly not a communist.

if anything free software is what happens when your anticapitalist movement has no grounding in anticapitalist theory

must've missed their apologetics for any celebrity accused of SA since woody allen