See my comments below.
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Michael Eisenscher wrote:
> Marx? Engels? China Turns the Radicals Chic
>
> By Steven Mufson
> Washington Post Foreign Service
> Monday, March 2, 1998; Page A13
>
> BEIJING�Entrepreneurs of the world, step right up! Get them while
> they last!
>
> China is issuing a special limited edition of the "Communist Manifesto"
> to mark the anniversary of the tract written 150 years ago by Karl Marx
> and Friedrich Engels.
>
> Written as revolution was spreading across Europe in 1848, the
> manifesto has now been turned into a marketing opportunity. Never
> mind the masses. China is issuing 5,000 commemorative copies of the
> work and 500 copies of a collectors' edition, the state-run New China
> News Agency said last week.
Wow! That's five and a half copies for each million inhabitants of China!
This doesn't sound like a marketing opportunity. It sounds more like a
memento that will be distributed to selected party members and their
friends.
Some years ago, I was told by a colleague that the U.S. Information Agency
once published a Spanish-language book containing various national
constitutions so that U.S. diplomats could give them as gifts to their
foreign contacts. However, the colleague thought that he could better
advance U.S. interests by giving a bottle of whiskey!
Steven Zahniser
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
