Giant red banners hang from every corner of Beijing welcoming the return of Hong Kong and promising to 'wash as white as snow China's 100-year-long shame'. But the nation is simultaneously in the grip of a growing Jane Austen craze.
As some in the media relive the humiliations inflicted by British gunboats, millions of Chinese are also watching Pride and Prejudice, enthralled by how Mrs Bennet marries off her five daughters.
Jane Austen has become the new opiate of the masses as Chinese Central Television (CCTV) re-broadcasts the BBC series twice a week and millions of copies of her works are bought.
'Everyone's watching it, turn on your TV and it's there,' said Zhu Hong, translator and professor of English literature at the Institute of Foreign Literature in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 'It is about the problem of self-delusion, and that is something the Chinese don't like to own up to.' 'It is a real masterpiece and there is no sex or violence,' explained CCTV spokesman Feng Wangyou. According to CCTV surveys, the series has at least 10 million - perhaps 20 million - viewers.
'Actually, it is all very paradoxical. On the one hand there is all this anti-Western propaganda and, on the other, all kinds of English and Western things are winning converts,' said Dong Leshan, who translated George Orwell's 1984 and other modern Western classics.
The Chinese have not just become fascinated by novels of English manners, they have become devoted croquet players and eaters of cream cakes. On every CAAC flight vacuum-packed cream cakes (made in Thailand) come with the lunch tray, thereby introducing Chinese palates to a new delicacy.