Old China hand Jane Macartney (pictured) is a descendant of George Macartney, the first British envoy to China, who came to China in the 18th Century with the aim of negotiating trading agreements with the Qing Dynasty government led of Emperor Qianlong.
Jane Macartney has been in and out of China since the early 1980s. She is now the Beijing correspondent for The Times (U.K.).
She has a blog: Sinofile. This is from a recent post:
It should have been a historic moment. I boarded the first train to run from Beijing to Lhasa along the highest railway in the world. The air at Beijing West Station hummed with the piped muzack of Auld Lang Syne. The most modern train in China pulled out of the station to begin its 48-hour journey to the Tibetan capital.
I should have been thrilled. But the excitement was tempered. The Chinese authorities had omitted to mention that this wasn’t really the first train to Lhasa…
UPDATE 2: Previously reproduced ‘CCTV’ comment deleted, see comments for more of the same.