The Americans declare war on terror; the Chinese declare war on Starbucks. This is not to suggest that the US, for all its faults, is the more serious nation - but actually, maybe it is. I mean, just how silly can the mainland get?
'Starbucks may be 'forbidden' at China Palace Museum'. Such was the headline on the astonishing Reuters story out of Beijing. In it, we were told, authorities were training their censorious guns on a Starbucks retail shop in the Forbidden City compound.
The worry is that the presence of this brewing branch of the multinational coffee-house chain is an insult to homegrown Chinese culture. But is it? You bet it is.
Starbucks is a kind of unintended insult to any local culture - everywhere. The chain infests the planet like corporate locusts that quietly but steadily eat away at local cultural foliage.
A Starbucks is as much a slick symbol of the homogenising powers of mass-produced multinational consumer products as is a glossy, new and characterless car coldly designed in one country and then thrown together in another, drawing on car parts from all over.
You see, economic globalisation doesn't give us culture, it gives us profits - albeit probably not properly distributed along all economic and social lines. Globalisation doesn't enhance local cultures, it competes with them, sometimes grinding them to dust.
Consider the travel experience of today. Once you have toured widely enough, you see so many Guccis, Diors, KFCs, McDonald's and so on that you sometimes forget where you have been. You perhaps even start to wonder if there remains any indigenous centre anywhere.
