Madame Wu's lesson for the historically challenged

The burden of history weighs heavily on Vice-Premier Wu Yi .

Why else would she open trade talks with a high-powered US delegation this week with a PowerPoint presentation with charts, graphics and pictures illustrating 5,000 years of the country's history that read more like a History 101 course at a university?

'We have had the genuine feeling that some American friends are not only having limited knowledge of, but harbouring much misunderstanding about, the reality in China,' she said in her opening remarks, which were followed by an erudite historical discourse on dynastic cycles, a century of foreign exploitation, civil war, poverty and breathtaking economic development.

It was not reported how many of the US delegates managed to stay awake, most of whom had years of experience on Wall Street and advanced degrees in economics but, alas, not in history.

However, some western analysts observed that Madame Wu's presentation was aimed not so much at the audience at hand but those in the US Congress, who harbour far stronger anti-China sentiments than the delegation members led by the ever-friendly US treasury chief Henry Paulson, whose tenure as head of investment powerhouse Goldman Sachs scored a near-perfect record in securing deals on the mainland.

If this is the case, her good intention was sorely misplaced. It'd be hard to think of any group of people in the world less interested in millennial Chinese history or any recent real progress than US congressmen and women, whose chief interest is to make a bogeyman out of the country.