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Free Tibet flag factory discovered --- in China
What happens when you mix a rapidly growing manufacturing economy, unbridled entrepreneurial enthusiasm and uneducated workers? Sweet mistakes like what happened this week in China.Police in Guangdong, China just raided a factory that was apparently manufacturing "Free Tibet" flags, the same ones that protesters have been flying across the world, at Olympic events and in the face of frustrated Chinese bureaucrats.
Apparently the workers initially didn't know what kind of flags they were making, they just thought that they were making colorful, fun flags for export. After finally getting suspicious, they found out what the Snow Lion flag meant and notified authorities.
Who has the gall to try to manufacture something like that in a communist country? The workers can plead ignorance all they want, but someone had to authorize the order.
Awwwwwkward.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Marilyn Terrell Apr 30th 2008 10:45PM
There's a cool story on the National Geographic magazine website this month about Tibet, published originally in 1955. It's called "My Life in Forbidden Lhasa," and it was written by Heinrich Harrer, who was an Austrian POW who escaped and ended up in Tibet and became the tutor to the young Dalai Lama. It describes a pretty fascinating Tibet before the Chinese took over:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/tibetans/harrer-text
Scrumble Jan 31st 2009 6:35PM
I can't imagine the workers would want to put themselves out of a job, even if they don't really believe in a free Tibet. There is a basic level of distrust against one's own government when one is poor.
Some of the middle management, who might be well-off enough to be patriotic but who didn't get big enough bribes to keep their mouths shit, probably did that.
Either way, the owners of the factory probably still made off with all the loot.