Beijing has lodged a solemn protest with Britain over recent meetings between high-ranking British officials and Hong Kong political figures.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei criticised Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Hugo Swire, a minister of state with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for meeting Hong Kong’s former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang and former Hong Kong legislative council member Martin Lee Chu-ming.

The row follows in the wake of an unofficial web poll in Hong Kong calling for full democracy for the Hong Kong special administrative region.

Anson Chan and Martin Lee are strange figures to be calling for democracy. 

The former spent 34 years in the service of the British colonial government, when political parties and democracy were banned and government censorship was in place. 

She received a decoration from the Queen for her dedication to Britain’s rule of Hong Kong. 

As for Martin Lee, he served on the legislative council under two Hong Kong governors without a murmur about democracy, vociferously supported the last governor Chris Patten in the latter’s attempts to sabotage the handover and has been banned from the mainland for calling for the overthrow of the Beijing government.

The aim of these people and their ilk is to force Beijing to crack down on separatist tendencies in Hong Kong, so they can say to the people of Taiwan: “Look! They said they won’t interfere with us under the ‘One country, two systems policy,’ but don’t believe them.” 

There are now 100 million “dancing grannies” across China and the number is growing rapidly as the country ages.

The dancers, nearly all middle-aged and elderly women with some male retirees, gather in the early mornings and evenings and dance to recorded music. 

Their favourite spots are parks but many gather in public squares and the plazas in front of department stores. 

A distinct group are the yang-ge dancers, who perform in unison and waving fans in a traditional folk dance from north-east China.

The city of Xi’an is proposing a new law to curb the dancers — banning them from performing between 10pm and 8am as part of new city noise regulations. 

But for the most part the authorities are wary of taking on the growing ranks of elderly dancers. The police have shown uncharacteristic restraint, pointing out that there is no law prohibiting people from dancing in public.

Holding high a cutout portrait of chairman Mao Zedong, more than 1,000 people swam in the Hanjiang River at Xiangyang, Hubei province, on July 13 to mark the 48th anniversary of Mao’s swim in the Yangtze River. The Hanjiang River is a branch of the Yangtze. Mao was a physical fitness enthusiast and encouraged the Chinese people to take more exercise. Areas with free exercise equipment can be found all over China’s cities and even in remote villages these days.

IN DAXING, a suburb of Beijing, young internet addicts live in guarded cells behind walls topped with barbed wire. 

They take medication, participate in therapy and adhere to a physical and dietary regimen to treat their supposed disorder. 

China is well on the way to becoming the most wired country in the world in terms of the number of its “netizens,” and was among the first countries to label “internet addiction” a clinical disorder. 

Internet cafes have sprung up all over the place and many young people spend inordinate amounts of time there. It seems that it is the parents who frog-march their children to the Daxing facility.