“The greatest insult an outsider could pay to the Chinese people would be failing to understand what lies beneath.” You can start by reading Howard French’s latest piece, where he compares China to a prototype at a car show and urges you to kick the tires.

He even gives you some ammo to use against your friends with “Free Tibet” stickers plastered all over their trapper keeper: “The onrush of Western sympathy for the cause of Tibet is well-intentioned but often naïve… Tibetans have become lovable because of popular notions about Buddhism and because of the way Hollywood has romanticized Tibet and its saffron-robed monks and supported the Dalai Lama.”