I wonder what you have to do to be Beijing correspondent for The Independent. In an article about (of all things) education published a few days ago, Clifford Coonan informed his readers:
"Education has been highly competitive in China ever since the
philosopher Confucius helped formulate the exam system for public
service in the T'ang dynasty AD618 to 907."
Speaking of "public service" instead of the civil service or bureaucracy in the context of imperial China is careless. Spelling Tang "T'ang" shows that Coonan hasn't learned the difference between the pinyin transliteration system (preferred by everyone these days, including himself in the rest of his article and The Independent in general) and the old Wade-Giles system. And saying that Confucius was around during the Tang although the proverbial school child could have told him that Confucius died in 479 B.C. shows that Coonan didn't read the first few pages of his Lonely Planet Guide.
Harrumph,
Paul Frank
Huemoz
Switzerland
P.S. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2631527.ece
