"My Time As A Prisoner At The Thomas The Tank Engine Factory"

In Communist China, even the foreman at the Thomas the Tank Engine toy factory can be a dangerous, knee-breaking thug, compared to whom visiting journalists and even the local authorities are relatively powerless:

As an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.

That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.

“You’ve intruded on our property,” one factory boss shouted at me. “Tell me, what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” When I answered that I had come to meet the maker of a toy that had recently been recalled in the United States because it contained lead paint, he suggested I was really a commercial spy intent on stealing the secrets to the factory’s toy manufacturing process.

It's an interesting point: the West looks at China as a Big Brother like state of rigid laws and omnipresent authorities, but in a country addicted to foreign investment, the opposite is true: capitalism in Communist China is the new Wild West.

My Time as a Hostage [NY Times] (via Boing Boing)