Dinner with the Party

"There's something about your familiarity with Marxism that's uncontrollably sexy," she groaned. "The principle that the revolution is led by the vanguard is more Leninist than Marxist," we replied. It may well have been Trotsky, but who was going to drag up such internecine issues when things were going so well? "And the Three Represents," she countered, "do you think it reconciles revolutionary socialism with market-led economic development...."

We haven't done a lesson on obscure Chinese political phrases yet, mostly because they can be a bit hard to drop into conversation. But while you can live without this stuff most of the time, every now and then you'll have dinner with someone important and being familiar with Chinese political rhetoric becomes surprisingly useful. So join Brendan and Gail for a quick Chinese podcast that covers some of the more common terms getting bandied about these days, including the revolutionary contributions of current Fearless Leader Hu.