Chinese Party Congress

Leave your rubber knives, chickens and balloons at home

The Chinese government is just a little "Paranoid" about the up coming Communist Party Congress which will see a change in leadership for the first time in 10 years.  So, in celebration of this momentous occasion they have decided that a whole raft  of innocuous items which are about as dangerous as a baby are to be banned.  

Shopkeepers have been instructed to remove sharp items such as kitchen knives and pencil sharpeners from their shelves. The Happiness Supermarket in central Beijing replaced its stock of knives with neat rows of can openers and potato peelers. "The police came in and said we're just not allowed to sell them," said an employee.
There have been even stranger developments. Beijing's taxi drivers have been instructed to dismantle their backseat window cranks and child-lock their doors. "The company management said at the meeting that in the past, some passengers had thrown leaflets out of the taxi window," one driver told the Global Times. A widely circulated post on Sina Weibo, the popular microblogging website, shows an ostensibly leaked set of rules for taxi drivers to follow during the co ngress. One instructs them to refrain from driving through "areas of political importance". Another warns them to keep an eye out for passengers holding slogan-bearing balloons and "ping-pong balls bearing reactionary messages".

Everyone knows that ping-pong balls are your armed revolutionaries weapon of choice. Just think  about the injuries one might suffer say if you struck in the back of the head by one of these ping-pong balls of pain.

Zhang Feng, an official at the ministry of industry and information technology, denied rumours that China's internet will be shut down during the 18th party congress. But, Zhang told the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper, it will undergo maintenance "to guarantee the conference can smoothly complete its work duties". The term "18th party congress", as well as the names of top political leaders including Hu, Wen, and presumptive future president Xi Jinping, have been blocked on Sina Weibo.