And people complain about Aljazeera!

James Fallows via Brad de Long:

As I never tire of saying, China Daily is my favorite newspaper in the world.
But it's conceivable that not every visitor to the Washington Post's web site would know the reason for my fondness and loyalty. China Daily is the state-controlled English-language voice of the Chinese government to the outside world. Sometimes this makes it a useful source of intel about the line the government wants to push. For instance, its recent revelation that "most nations" opposed the choice of Liu Xiaobo as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Very often the hyper-earnestness of its approach makes it a delight. For example, here and here, or my favorite of all headlines, "Happiness abounds as country cheers."

Recently the Washington Post has started carrying China Daily's US edition as a physically separate advertising supplement to the printed paper, as described here. Fine: it's clearly labeled, and we've all gotta stay in business. But now the Post is doing the same thing on its website. Look at this part of the "Washington Post"'s site as it appears just now, and tell me how obvious it is that you're seeing a paid presentation of official Chinese government propaganda perspective...