Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE PUBLISHER OF Chinese national carrier Air China’s in-flight magazine has apologised for allegedly “racist” travel advice offered to passengers visiting London, as mainland social media users rushed to defend the controversial tips.
The latest issue of Wings of China ran an article detailing safety tips to travellers based on the race and nationality of local residents.
“London is generally a safe place to travel, however precautions are needed when entering areas mainly populated by Indians, Pakistanis and black people,” the article said in English translation below a Chinese text, according to a photograph published by CNBC.
We advise tourists not to go out alone at night, and females always to be accompanied by another person when travelling.
The Chinese version was worded slightly differently, stating that such neighbourhoods were “comparatively more chaotic” — an adjective often used to describe dangerous areas.
The English translation prompted London MP Virendra Sharma, who emigrated from India to Britain in the 1960s, to complain to the Chinese government.
“I am shocked and appalled that even today some people would see it as acceptable to write such blatantly untrue and racist statements,” he said in an online statement.
I have raised this issue with the Chinese ambassador, and requested that he ensures an apology is swiftly forthcoming from Air China, and the magazine is removed from circulation immediately.
In a Chinese-language statement today, the publisher attributed the “inappropriate descriptions” to editorial errors, stating that they were at odds with the “original intention to actively promote the beautiful scenery of London”.
It described itself as a third-party organisation, although Air China’s own website describes the magazine as “an authoritative information resource of Air China Group and Air China”.
The publisher apologised that the text had “misled” a number of media outlets and readers and damaged Air China’s brand image.
But on Chinese social media, most commenters expressed bafflement at the backlash.
In a common refrain, one user of China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform asked:
This is just stating the truth — what is there to apologise about?
Another queried: “There are more rapists and robbers there anyway -– why is saying this discriminatory?”
Many said they felt the advice was valuable.
“We can’t satisfy everyone, but we certainly must put Chinese people’s safety first,” one user stated.
Discussion and public awareness of racism in China is notoriously low — often resulting in viral scandals that spark global outrage beyond the Great Firewall but cause nary a whimper of concern within the mainland.
In May, an ad by a Chinese detergent maker depicting a black man stuffed into a washing machine and transformed into a fair-skinned Asian stoked outcry abroad, initially dismissed by the company as overly sensitive.
‘Politically correct’
China often portrays itself as the victim of discrimination at the hands of foreign media, and many on Weibo expressed indignation at what they saw as hypocritical finger-pointing from those in the West.
“We don’t owe black people, Indians or Pakistanis anything; we never trafficked slaves or colonised India and Pakistan,” wrote one user, adding:
So go die, all you politically correct people.
The controversy comes during a period of tension between Beijing and London.
British Prime Minister Theresa May returned to London this week from the G20 summit hosted by China, where she defended her decision to delay giving the go-ahead to a nuclear power project in which Beijing has substantial investment.
China has a one-third stake in the plan to build Britain’s first nuclear plant in decades at Hinkley Point in southwest England, along with French company EDF.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Well done to the government on a job well done, keep up the good work. Let’s all go to centra and get a few cans.
Mr. Murphy,
The government are failing. Why haven’t they scrapped the croke park agreement and reduced public sector pay? Why haven’t they burned the bondholders? Why have they given higher expenses allowance to TD’s? The list goes on…
heard they have good deals on today .
@Mark, going after the public sector? Really? You want to save money?! Look at Social Welfare, of course the report was repealed but when your better off on Social Welfare than working what does that say about our current welfare system?
So taxing everyone to the rafters DOES work. Why is this not comforting??
Because Irish people are placid.
Many Irish seem happy to endure new taxes without street protests or strikes.
Many Irish believe we’re under taxed. Sure, I’d like to pay less tax, but unfortunately that deficit won’t plug itself.
Mr. O’Suilleabháin:
The rich are under-taxed. Not the ordinary middle income earners. Anyone earning above €80 K pays little tax.
Frankly mark that’s rubbish. A single individual on 80k under PAYE pays roughly 30k in taxes. Plug it in here and see for yourself http://www.hookhead.com/Tools/tax2012.jsp
I agree with Ronan, we actually are still a low tax economy, even with the increases we’ve seen in the last few years. According to a recent report, we have the 2nd lowest tax revenue per GDP in the Eurozone: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0522/1224316503183.html
@Ignoreland, that’s slightly misleading in terms of income tax though, as GNP is the measure that should be used for Ireland. GDP includes all of the (subsequently re-repatriated) earnings of multinationals, who are definitely under taxed under double-dutch and other agreements.
We are undertaxed, though not to that extent. I don’t think the working population has the income to bridge the gap with the deficit.
Rónán O’Suilleabháin opposes tax hikes for the rich because
a) One of his family members are either on massive wages
b) He himself is earning or aspiring to become a rich boy
c) He follows the FG party line.
In any case, it doesn’t matter what he thinks it will pass with higher income taxes. His simple minded comment totally omits the fact that mega rich earners pay little income taxes and even get multi-million euro rebates back from the government,and the working mega rich have teams of high priced lawyers and numerous loop holes in the tax law to get them out of paying their fair share,just ask Bono.
Rónán, you are really in the dark.
Tim,
1. I’m not, and no-one else in my circle is on 80K or over.
2. Everyone has aspirations for themselves. It’s why I went to college. I will make no apology for that
3. I’m a FGer just because I support tax hikes and cuts?For your information I voted independent, and I support cuts and tax hikes because we are spending money we don’t have as a nation. I’m a realist.
4. I have not, in any thread, referred to the super rich. I have made a distinction of PAYE workers. Read my posts on this thread and others and you’ll see I’ve never advocated a lower tax rate for the mega rich. All I have said is that PAYE workers on 80K pay more than their fair share of tax, both in real terms, and as a percentage of their salary. They contribute a lot to this country.
5. Loop holes? For crying out loud, I suggested that this should be the target for progressively taxing the mega rich (clue: they earn a lot more than 80K and don’t pay under the PAYE system), not PAYE income tax rates.
6. I despise Bono
7. Play the ball and not the man. Don’t resort to some childish inaccurate profiling. Grow up and discuss the issues. All I’ve done here this evening is rubbish the notion that people on 80K don’t pay their share. They pay their share and the share of the people on 30K, who pay 5k per year according to
http://www.hookhead.com/Tools/tax2012.jsp. This is good. This is progressive tax. This is as it should be.
I agree with a tax rise for myself, but I also believe more people should be in the tax net. I’ll gladly pay an extra 100 euro per month next year, if the person on 30k will pay 20 euro. 5er of their money per week for 25 of mine. Can’t say fairer than that.
Creating a 3rd band of tax will only punish PAYE workers, and leave those that are self-assessed to continue finding creative ways to declare their income and pay less tax.
The equitable answer is property equity taxes (i.e. none paid by those in negative equity, as they actually have the square root of FA in terms of assets), increases to CGT and CAT to bring them in line with the marginal rate of tax for PAYE workers (makes it not worth cooking the income slip), and closing some loopholes, for individuals and corporations (the effective tax paid by multinationals is generally a lot less than 12.5%)
Ronan,
Those tax cuts weren’t tied to business or jobs or anything else, that was money that simply went back into their pockets. They could spend it or save it or stuff it in their mattress. The didn’t have to have a business to hire anyone for.
I really don’t mind, in this economy a targeted tax cut for someone or a company who does hire more than they had, we do need jobs. But just giving rich people, not business, but individuals a tax break and making them all ‘job creators’ overnight is a fools game. If wealthy earners wanted to pay more taxes, they could, by paying as an employee rather than through long-term capital gains, and shareholder distributions – this punishes PAYE workers.
Just FIVE wealthy people paid the wealth levy in 2011:
http://www.thejournal.ie/guess-how-many-irish-tax-exiles-have-paid-the-new-rich-tax-273724-Nov2011/
Tax cuts for the upper 1%? Let me inform you that tax cuts have NEVER worked in stimulating the economy. Find me one instance where they have worked historically. Problem is you cant. I know a guy whose bad worked in Dublin. He is retired now, and I dont know what he did there but I do know he owns a home in Florida that 2000 sq M and he is very well off. His son told me that creating jobs wasnt the objective. It was accumulating wealth. Thats fine if you are running a company. Its not fine if you are trying to develop a plan to create jobs. For you to think that tax cuts will be a save this country tells me you are delusional. Its your type of thinking, without facts, that is the problem in this country.
Rob, I never advocated tax cuts for the wealthy. Read what I said, and not what others have invented from what I actually did talk about: the relative contribution of PAYE earners, and how a third tax band wouldn’t target the right people
So only another 8 years of this and we’ll be have a balanced budget? Happy Days…..
People still have the option of resisting these taxes by paralyzing the country with strikes and protests.
The next protest on on July 18th.
So why the need for all the taxes? i.e. household etc.
i meant stealth taxes.
Because Fine Gael want to pay the bondholders with Irish peoples money.
Beacause there’s still a projected gap of €17bn in the current budget between tax and expenditure. This has absolutely nothing to do with the banks.
Ignoreland,
That gap would be halved if the bank debt was burned. The remainder could be reduced with the existing austerity.
There’ll be some extra bottles of champagne cracked open this evening in Goldman Sachs, while the rest of us go to the poorhouse…..
I hope they have broadband in the poorhouses so we can keep our discussion going!
Fantastic news for Ireland. Someone tell the shinners that austerity DOES work! Despite the austerity campaign the Irish people have no choice in paying for thanks to Higgins & Co, the majority of the Irish people are accepting the tough times and helping getting the economy pack on track. Things are slowly picking up with revenue exceeding targets, a return to the bond markets for the first time in nearly two years, more jobs being announced (well over 4k this year id say), employment figures steadying and hopefully will see a decline, the “never going to happen” debt reductions continue (another mistake by the shinners in their No campaign, we got the deal even though we voted yes!).
I suppose it does give some comfort to Sinn Fein & the ULA. Their wages, pension and excessive (sometimes illegal!) expenses are rock solid.
In all fairness Tim, he’s just following orders from head office……vich must be obeyed vitout qvestion.
Kevin just head to Dublin Airport to understand why employment figures are ‘steadying’ you might learn something. And BTW it’s not a return to the bond markets we are selling short term T-bills please get up to speed before commenting.
How many bank bailouts, I mean hospital beds will that get us?
Probably endless bank bailouts at the expense of every Hospital bed.
Brilliant news
I wonder if Noonan or Howlin have even reflected for one minute on what cost those figures may have inflicted on some of their fellow Irish citizens?
Noonan and Howlin only care about their political class.
The time has come for people to vote them out of office.
Ya but 2 departments over spent by €200m……& I’m sure further savings can be made by being more prudent
Seem to remember a report from early in the year that a lot of corporation tax that was held over from last year is added to this year.Could be wrong, anyone recall?
I have no problem paying taxes for services but I have a big problem paying taxes for over payed civil servants ( this is certainly not the frontline workers who are underpaid but the useless middle and upper managers ), bank debts that had nothing to do with us ,Td’s wages, expenses, pensions and that bloody Seanad with jumped up failures spending our money without any concern of the suffering it cost collecting that money. nCut the waste and let the tax take go further rather than collect more tax nn
Great, our national debt is still on track for a couple of hundred billion. Give me a shout when we start pulling in a budget surplus. We will need 40 decades of budget surpluses to cover out debts.
Courtesy of FG and FF. They are no different.
FF created the debt and the deficit. Not much FG can do really but make the deficit smaller which they are.
Oh please! If I hired someone to turn around my sales and the best they could do after 18 months is blame the guy before, I’d fire them. Unlike how blueshirts prefer to think, in this country there are winners and loosers. Either you produce results or you’re fired.
Ok hotshot sales guy. You have a 20 billion budget deficit on an income of 30 billion. What are you going to do to make that a 5 billion surplus in 1 year?
Dear JournalnnWhy is one contributor allowed to post five out of twenty two postings on any story on these pages. nWhen a story hits the headlines and for some is the news of the year you allow a dissenter or a naysayer or a prophet of doom to drown it out with vulgar noise. That’s not a newspaper that’s a rant!
Dalt could you tell us which part of the Socialist spectrum receives your support. Do you get expenses?
Oh dats gd news 500 million of target :) . .
Dear government,nnYes, I know. Look at my pay check and you know why you’re aheadnnSincerely nnP.S. I’d like my money back please!
In the end the taxes just get passed to the folks on the bottom, so short of a total societal collapse many wallstreeters are set. It’s sad really, the level of deception. The only thing you can say is it keeps folks on their toes pedaling ever faster to pay the bills.
But the real sad thing is the level of resources that evaporates in some truly worthless government. At least if I dig a hole and fill it up again, I can say I’ve gotten some exercise. But can I say the same about stealth taxes to keep away the income taxes? I’m still trying to find a glass half full for that!
:-)
Ha thats gas but yet there still bringing in bin water and house charges coning us out of more money.. I wouldnt be suprised if the country was out of ressession and their bull shitin to get money..
Not without a fight. For example, there are clever ways of bypassing a water meter or even removing it. The household charge will eventually be scrapped if early elections happen. The next government will repeal water charges and property taxes. Savings can be made elsewhere by lowering public sector pay, lowering public pensions, increasing wealth taxes, and above all stopping the handover to Banks.
Of itself having an extra €500m can’t be a bad thing. (presuming this is a true figure arrived at with honesty and in good faith)
The effects of unsustainable tax policy, largesse and “buying” of votes that occurred during the Celtic tiger leave us where we are today. And this is ever before we consider the ineptitude, farce and criminal activity that occurred within the banking system during the property bubble and associated debts. Perhaps the only benefit was that our dalliance with the boom (to bust) economy gave us a glimpse and expectation of the living standards advanced economies expect. There is a strong correlation between social and economic equality and positive living standards within high tax economies such as the Nordic countries.
Ireland needs to decide what kind of living standards it wants for its people and how it plans to go about fully financing this.
In the mean time, I’m glad they found €500m with almost the same joy as finding a tener in my jeans.
have your say