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China's "Shut-Up" Envoy Gets a Promotion

10:30 AM, Feb 12, 2007 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB
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Tim Johnson, the China correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, had an interesting story up over the weekend on his blog, China Rises. According to Johnson, Sha Zukang, "the Chinese diplomat who suggested last August that Washington should just 'shut up and keep quiet' about China's defense spending has just gotten a big promotion."

The "un-diplomatic" diplomat, Sha Zukang, just won a plum assignment near the top of the United Nations hierarchy. He'll be under secretary of economic and social affairs, a post just under Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Sha is currently China's representative in Geneva to U.N. organizations there.

Sha threw diplomatic language to the winds last August when he told the BBC that the Bush administration has no place criticizing increases in Chinese military spending. . . . His statements raised hackles in Washington, but heartened Chinese who have grown weary of U.S. criticism of the nation's rise.

Sha has blazed a trail for all those young internationalists aspiring to a career in world government. You want to get ahead? Just tell the United States to go f%&# itself.

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