Previously-Shanghai-based Dutch journalist Fons Tuinstra's latest entry is an <a href="http://www.chinaherald.net/2005/09/view-of-economist-economy-quest-for.html" title="China Herald: The Quest For China's Middle Class">instant classic</a>.  No wonder people just give the man money to run around the world <a href="http://www.chinaherald.net/2005/09/internet-picking-up-at-podcasting.html" title="China Herald: Picking Up At Podcasting">making podcasts</a> and writing articles about China:

<quote>Long, long time ago, there were only two classes: the poor and the rich. Then, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century the poor developed this nasty habit of beating the shit out of the rich every now and then. Some people called this a 'class struggle', but that word has been now become defunct because the rich came up with this beautiful idea of redefining the poor into the middle class. It was very un-middle class to beat the shit out of the rich, since the middle class people were a little bit rich themselves.</quote>

The <q>my Chinese friends do not want to be middle class, they want to be rich</q> quote at the end is a real zinger, too.