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.
if this was about a head of state within the imperial core or periphery ignoring developments in designated foreign adversaries, it'd be rightfully lampooned as site tagline material. this is nonsense drivel on par with 'kamala green suit' epic clapback trash
Elsewhere, governments may have been glued to the television
begging for one example, the entire screenshotted excerpt hangs on this (likely imaginary) counterexample
An issue of the New York Times published on September 10, 1906, chronicled the result:
“Several thousand persons took the subway, the elevated and the surface cars to the New York Zoological Park in the Bronx yesterday, and there watched Ota Benga, the bushman, who has been put by the management on exhibition there in the monkey cage.
The bushman didn't seemed (sic) to mind it, and there could be no doubt that to the majority the joint man and monkey exhibition was the most interesting sight in the Bronx park. Over and over again, the crowd laughed at him. If he wonders why he does not show it.”
In case you think that this is unfairly judging the paper by the standards of today:
...a group of black clergymen took obvious and immediate offence to this display.
Led by James H. Gordon, the group called for an immediate end to Benga’s incarceration.
They weren't talking about Trump! They were talking about other countries impacted by the tariffs.