Veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty is renowned for his grumpy gruffness. It’s part of his appeal. But a recent rant on China went well beyond the normal bounds of middle-aged asperity, provoking howls of protest on the internet and a lawsuit alleging “serious spiritual and psychological injury” to the Chinese people. On the other hand, Cafferty’s remarks encapsulated many of the pre-Olympic strains currently bedevilling western relations with China. Speaking in the April 9 broadcast of Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, he complained the US was “in hock” to China due to the Iraq war and record trade deficits.

He went on: “We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying in Wal-Mart ... I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” Uproar ensued. But much European criticism of China in the wake of the Tibet crackdown has scarcely been kinder. Some politicians, pressure groups and media have used the Lhasa protests to publicise other causes or berate the supposed tyrants of Beijing

on ideological and economic grounds.

The Chinese response to the criticism, and to ongoing protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay, was initially uncertain. Chinese officials admit they were shocked by the sudden, unforeseen surge in public and media hostility. “We were very surprised. We didn’t have a strategy to deal with it,” an official said. But an angry backlash, both official and public, has been building in recent weeks amid concern that the August games, in which China has invested so much of its prestige, may be disrupted or even ruined by political controversy, demonstrations and boycotts.

So far, despite the protests, no change in China’s harsh grip on Tibet is in prospect — or in the Communist party’s overall policy outlook. But Chinese officials say they are working on ways to improve their image through better public diplomacy. “We need to be more open and transparent. We need to respond more quickly. The usual way we react when we are criticised is to be defensive and say nothing. This is a bad habit,” one official said. In the

run-up to the Olympics China planned to have prepared responses ready if issues such as Darfur, human rights, Burma, arms sales, or environmental problems suddenly reignited, he said.

China needed “to reflect more” on some of these issues but its critics should do likewise, the official said. China’s investment in Africa, for example, was largely beneficial to the countries concerned, meeting needs neglected by the west. China was not ignoring the Darfur crisis; it now has 350 engineering unit troops there on infrastructure projects. And although China had tried to moderate the behaviour of Burma’s junta, Beijing (unlike the US or Britain) would continue to uphold the principle of non-intervention in other countries.

While free speech and freedom of the press were important values, those freedoms were sometimes abused, he said. That is a problematic message coming from a country where the media is so strictly controlled. But it may explain the slogan on one of the new T-shirts on sale in Beijing: “Shut up, CNN!” — The Guardian