Xi Jinping and the Useful Stooges

On Wednesday, American businessfolks gave a standing ovation to the Chinese dictator. I hope Mr Xi gives a bonus to the genius who ran the Flying Tigers game this fall. For the cost of a few dozen round-trip tickets and hotel rooms, he got two 14th Air Force veterans, their kin, and the grandly named Sino-American Aviation Heritage Society to come to China and set off a wonderfully timed barrage of favorable news stories to the worldwide media. Google regularly sends me a list of Flying Tigers references, and on just one day -- November 16 -- there were ten links along the line of "Flying Tigers veterans relive friendship between Chinese and American people during China tour" at Yahoo Finance. 

As part of this months-long campaign, Chinese activists also held ceremonies and put up bilingual historical markers in Commerce, Texas, where Claire Chennault may have been born in 1893.

Well, it certainly paid off for Mr Xi. I wonder who got the frequent-flier miles?