In China, the Chicago way

chicago tribune ^ | 12/27/07 | Evan Osnos

[steelboy]

Chinese leaders are intent on expanding investment overseas, while boosting imports from abroad to help reduce a yawning trade deficit. That has created a feeding frenzy for charlatans and speculators, who, armed with a few Mandarin bons mots, have set themselves up as rainmakers. They subsist on obfuscation, encouraging each side to believe that the other is impenetrable.

[2banana]

Thomson takes the opposite approach. Faced, for instance, with the task of explaining Mayor Richard Daley's outsize influence in Chicago and Democratic Party politics, Thomson borrows a concept familiar to his listeners: "I say he's on the Party Central Committee," he said, invoking the name of the elite decision-making body of China's Communist leadership. "They say 'Ahhh, OK.'"

How true - in more ways than one...