Excellent article, Teck Lim!

The responses here are indicative of just how complete and effective the Western media's demonisation of China has been.

China is at last standing up assertively and calling out the West's threats, bullying and lies. Most in the West only see the victim's response, not the bully's provocation. They are totally unaware of the extreme lengths to which the US has over many years sought to contain and provoke China. O'Bama's Pivot to Asia in 2012 was nothing short of a call to arms against its biggest rival. The US has now surrounded China with over 400 military bases and is provocatively and illegally entering its waters and airspace. It's arbitrarily imposing sanctions on China and deliberately fomenting civil unrest over Hong Kong, Taiwan, XinJiang and any other opportunity it senses it can exploit in order to destabilise its rival. The US would never stand for another country doing this to America, but it sees itself as having the God-given right to antagonise and contain China or any other country it considers a threat to its self-appointed role as the world's hegemon. And when China finally stands up and decides to push back and call out the lies, it's the one that gets branded as the bully!

This wouldn't have happened if we'd had well-informed and balanced media coverage.

I guess China's emissions are likely to rise given the end of the one child policy. Rather than emissions per capita perhaps a better measure of environmental credentials is emissions per land area.

Bronwyn,

The amount of aggression that is coming from Bejing with respect to Taiwan, the South China sea, Australia is inexcusable so is the treatment of Tibetans, Hong Kongers, Uighurs etc.

China is doing its best to piss off every country in the world and now doesn't like that it's getting push back.