I don't even know where to start with this one. It seems like North Americans have some kind of strange mental illness that forces us to compartmentalize Chinese into one of two stereotypes:
  1. The terrifying yellow horde that will sweep across the planet and consume us all (see previous post)
  2. Harmless rubes and nerds who couldn't find their asses with both hands and a map (think of the ultra-hysterically named "Long Dong" from the movie  "Sixteen Candles")
According to the Canada Free Press, an "online newspaper" that seems to be the vanity press of one Ms. Judi McLeod, those hee-larious and ig-no-runt Chinese are infatuated with (guffaw!) UFOs!

China hugging little green men
By Judi McLeod
Friday, August 12, 2005

Toronto-- Communist party officials in the People's Republic of China are hugging little green men.

The Red Dragon, it seems, has been out in outer space for some time.

In China, believing in Jesus could get you jail or worse. Believing in ETs, which one prominent professor claims live among the general Chinese population, could land you a government grant.

China’s craze for UFOs seems to have followed right on the heels of a revival in Christianity.

Even in the face of persecution, the Chinese church has been growing by an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 new believers each day, making it the largest revival in the history of the church.

But especially since the millennium, flying saucers are almost as big a business boom in China as the trademark cheapie bric a brac the nation exports to the outside world.

Trademark cheapie bric-a-brac? This would be the same China who's recent attempt to purchase a minor American oil company spurred howls of outrage and a strange Henry Kissinger/China conspiracy theory from, why, from the Canada Free Press? And never mind the basic inaccuracy that "believing in Jesus" can get you put in Jail in China. (Those are the only mentions of Christianity in the story, by the way. The rest is devoted to ridicule.)

The major source for this world-shocking China-UFO expose appears to be a 1997 Wall Street Journal story by Beijing-based journalist Kathy Chen (whom I've spoken to in the course of my job, and who I'm pretty sure has a more balanced perspective on the Chinese than Judi McLeod). Kathy's article is conveniently available on the UFO Evidence website, so go have a read. She also talks about how UFO's have captured Chinese imaginations, and how there is even state support for research into them. But her tone is altogether lighter than that of the Canada Free Press and makes it clear that much of the impetus for China's UFO "craze" comes from a few eccentrics.

This doesn't sound all that different to me than the UFO infatuations of any other country, including Canada or, of course, the USA, which has never been short of UFO nuts. But sure neither the US nor Canada, both run by completely sensible governments, would ever spend tax dollars  on something so zany as UFOs, right?

Wrong, naturally. Here's the US Air Force's own fact sheet on "Project Blue Book" (a Virtual Browser link, since I have trouble with .mil sites from inside China). For more info, we can turn to the invaluable Wikipedia:

Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It was the second revival of such study, started in 1952, and was active up to January 1970, as it had been ordered for termination in December 1969.

***

The goal of the project BLUE BOOK was to determine if UFOs were a potential threat to national security. Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analysed and filed. As the result of the Condon Report, Project Blue Book was shut down in 1969. This project was the last publicly known UFO research project lead by the USAF. [1]

Public USAF UFO studies were first initiated under Project Sign at the end of 1947, following many widely-publicised UFO reports (see Kenneth Arnold).

***

Sign was officially inconclusive regarding the cause of the sightings. However, according to Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, Sign's initial intelligence estimate, written at the end of the summer of 1948, concluded that the flying saucers were real craft [emphasis added by Imagethief], were not made by either the Russians or U.S., and were likely extraterrestrial in origin. (See also extraterrestrial hypothesis) This estimate was forwarded to the Pentagon, but subsequently ordered destroyed by Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, USAF Chief of Staff, citing a lack of physical proof. Vandenberg subsequently dismantled Project Sign.

Shocking. I'm embarrassed to be part of such a gullible culture. (Some reports on Blue Book suggest that, in addition to national seccurity, it was concerned with the possibility of appropriating UFO technology.) But, of course, the Canada Free Press is clearly in a strong position to provide unbiased scientific inquiry and criticism, and to disabuse us of our silly superstitions. Just look at some of today's hard hitting stories in their "Science" section:
  • Tree Ring Circus
    Remain calm. There is no global warming. Apparently there is no useful climate change information to be gathered from tree rings.
  • No fizz in soda scare
    Remain calm. There is no link, repeat, no link, between consumption of sugar and diabetes
  • No beef behind red-meat cancer scare
    Remain calm. There is no link between consumption of red meat and colon cancer.
Right. The authorities. At this point I am duty bound to note that all of the Canada Free Press' "science news" comes from the website www.junkscience.com, a creation of Fox News commentator and general corporate shill (yeah, I know that's the pot calling the kettle black) Tom Milloy. A slightly old but very interesting profile of Milloy can be found here. You can see what rock-solid credibility this brings to the Canada Free Press. (Milloy has got some press in the Journal before as well, of course, but we'll overlook that.)

Now before we further analyze the Chinese preoccupation with UFOs, we should level the playing field. Using the lazy blogger's statistical analysis tool of last resort, a Google search, I can report the following:
  • A search for "China + ufo" yields 946,000 results.
  • A search for "Canada + ufo" yields 860,000 results.
  • As the holder of a bona-fide science degree from the University of California, I believe in applying a certain amount of rigor. A control search for "Canada + ufo + elvis  + Judi + asshole" yields 52 results. So we can be sure that Google isn't inflating the numbers on us. (This last is really a sad commentary on the sheer amount of garbage on the web.)
Let's look at some the information returned by that "Canada+UFO" search:

  • From UFO Evidence's UFOs in Canada page:
    "And that was how we learned Canada was indeed "invaded" in the late summer and fall of 1967, though barely a ripple of it came to public attention. On our visit to the beautiful Cariboo country we heard of sighting after sighting and came to know in advance what year would be mentioned as the time of occurrence - 1967." (1967 is, coincidentally, the year of Imagethief's birth. Could I be a Canadian stoner space alien masquerading as a human PR consultant in Beijing? A spooky thought. My "parents" told me I was born in San Francisco, but where's the proof?)
  • From UFOinfo.com's Canada sightings page for 2005:
    Jan    2nd - Montreal, Quebec
    Jan    2nd - Ucluelet, Vancouver Island
    Jan    3rd - Grouse Mountain, Vancouver
    ...and 114 other sightings through two days ago. Plus equally exhaustive records for prior years. I can think of no more likely place for a UFO spotting,  by the way, than "Ucluelet Mountain".
  • Should you wish to do more research on your own, About.com's list of Canadian UFO websites, including both English and French sites, just to prove that the Quebecois are no less screwed up than anyone else.
  • It turns out that the even the Canadian government  caught a dose of UFO fever at one time, as a quick read of Virtually Strange's page on Wilbert Smith reveals.
Yep, a well grounded and practical bunch, those Canadians, eh?

If any country should be preparing for arrival of UFOs, it's China. Think about it: if aliens do arrive on earth, and they want to speak to the most representative example of humanity, that person is likely to be one of 700 million-odd Chinese peasants. Why not make sure these salts of the earth (or salts of the Earth) are adequately prepared to represent mankind and, more importantly, China in the event of first contact? I think the Chinese government should print and distribute a manual to all citizens containing talking points to be used in any dialogue with alien visitors. As an Imagethief public service, I have prepared a draft that I invite the Chinese government to use:
  • (If asked to take an extraterrestrial to your leader.) Which leader do you wish to see? Village, district, provincial or national? An audience with senior government officials may take time to arrange.  While you wait, we would be pleased to arrange a tour of Mao Zedong's mausoleum. Please do not use your superior technology in a well-intentioned attempt to reanimate the Great Helmsman. That would cause protocol difficulties.
  • You may wish to know that China is the cradle of human civilization. Many of this planet's technological advances originated in China, including printing, gunpowder, the rotary engine and paper currency. We also discovered America and your own planet in AD1421.
  • Our capital city, Beijing, will host this planet's greatest sporting event in three years. We invite you to attend as guests of honor. We have recently unveiled a new slogan: "One World, One Dream".
  • Sorry about the "One World" thing.
  • We would like to send a delegation to visit your spaceship. This would purely be for the purpose of cultural exchange, and not so we could pilfer your faster-than-light technology.
  • We believe in not interfering in the internal affairs of other planets. Your extraterrestrial-organism-rights problems are none of our business. We hope you follow the same policy.
  • Taiwan has always been a part of China.
That should about cover it.

My undying gratitude to Gordon at the Horse's Mouth for not only sending me this article, but inviting me to blog it rather than doing it himself.