Chinese climate politics

Nowadays the German media is surprisingly China-phil. What's behind this new found love? Do tagesschau and Zeit believe they can actually influence the public opinion about China's climate policies and that in turn the (German) public opinion will push our politicians to reach out to the Chinese in Copenhagen?

http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/solarstadtrizhao100.html

http://www.zeit.de/2009/50/Regierungssysteme?page=2

For the less fortunate among you who are not fluent in German (ts, where is the time of Goedel and Wittgenstein, when every half-way intellectual learned German as a little child, along with Greek and Latin and French and... nevermind), one of the articles praises the town Rizhao in China that runs almost entirely on solar power (I assumed it to be a desert town; picture my surprise when I found it to be on the coast, about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai), the second one (from the Zeit - sorta the German version of le Devoir ;)) discusses China's dictatorship, pardon my language - strong central government is what I meant to say, as a benefit for climate change - only with a strong government, they argue, can you impose inconvenient rules and force your citizens to save energy and care about the environment. America and Europe i are apparently too democratic to save the planet. China certainly isn't the big planet saver yet either, but they might have a point. Incidentally, the article from tagesschau (the biggest German news show on public TV) comes out pretty well in google translate, while the Zeit is apparently too intellectual to be understood by a simple translation algorithm. Aren't we something? :) I can't help but be a bit bothered by the absolutism in both articles - not too long ago all you would hear in the German media was criticism of China's lack of openness and democracy and its terrible environmental track record. So, lack of personal freedom is a good or bad thing depending on the phase of the moon? Sorry, but that's not quite up to the standard we claim to impose on our unbiased media.

Thanks to IKEA I'm enjoying Gloegg (hot mulled wine) and ginger bread cookies and it's not even too cold at the moment, so life is good. Next week I have my Chinese final exam and although I know I don't have to care, having scored so well in the midterm, my ambition has been awakened... it should be possible to also score the best grade in the final, no? Wanna place bets? :P I'm not sure I will get my grades though, as I'm already leaving next Wednesday.

And in totally unrelated news... Washington DC's city council has approved a gay-marriage bill!!!! Yay!!! Who would have thought? It still needs to be signed into effect, so there's still the chance for some mormons to stage a protest. But even if they manage to pump enough money into a counter-movement as they did with prop8 in California... DC is not a state and therefore doesn't have a state constitution one could amend to make gay marriage unconstitutional! So, what would they amend then? :P