The Taxi driver doesn't like Obama. Rolling through the narrow back streets of Shenyang, a backwater industrial city of China's north east, the taxi driver makes it very clear: he doesn't like Obama.
Why? Becuase Obama is killing people in Libya so he can get oil.
I look at the man, sigh slightly and regret that and I can't speak enough Chinese to explain to him that the situation isn't that simple. That the Chinese news he is fed is controlled by the government. Reading the English version Chinese papers and watching the Chinese news, it's clear that the media has been told to hammer home a certain point: "The United States is attacking Libya to get oil, they are killing Libyans, no one is being helped. This shows the West cannot be trusted."
For a nation which teaches it's students to be hyperbolically sensitive about criticism of thier own country, it's painfully hyprocrital that they depict my country this way and not expect a reaction from me.
I pause for a moment before telling the taxi driver, "I watch American news, I watch Chinese news. I don't know if they are right. I really don't know if they tell the truth."
The taxi driver says something along the lines of "yeah," and that's where we let it lie.
(updated via email because my blog is blocked in China...)
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