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'Brainy Brian' - Voice & Votes

In March 2013, during the Chinese People's Parliamentary Consultative Committee deliberations (known as the 'Two Sessions' ), China Daily put out a number of programmes looking at many of the issues being discussed during the CPPCC.

Accordingly I was wheeled out to be interviewed on some of these topics. They called my slot "Brainy Brian" - much to my protestations! And as if to make matters worse, the graphics editor then mistyped the captions so that they read "Briany Brian", which had all then to be remade... except that the captions editor wasn't told, so I'm still officially briany as opposed to brainy!

One of the recordings was about taxi drivers in Beijing. I was anything but complimentary about them (though I did temper that by saying I had never had similar problems with taxis in other Chinese cities). As a result the programme editor decreed that most of the interview had to be cut out and just to use what I had said about UK taxi drivers. Unfortunately (for them), they forgot to edit out the introduction in which they had me saying that Beijing's taxi drivers are prone to cheat their customers, leaving a nasty taste in the mouth!

Anyway, as a result of that I refused thereafter to be interviewed or to write any more opinion columns for them, as they obviously weren't interested in my opinions!

Taxi Drivers

Air Pollution

Housing

Healthcare

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